I’ve been using Day One to keep notes for several years, but for various reasons I’m considering moving everything to DEVONthink. I’ve been using DT for some work related note keeping with the help of a few scripts (I’m not using the Journal Template thingy).
My notes are image heavy, I have a lot of images and a few videos. And this is why I’m writing this, before starting to do an actual move (I’ll probably write some scripts for this) I would like to ask how to best handle media files.
So the basic requirements for me are
Write in Markdown
Use meta data fields (the same as Multimarkdown)
A lot of photos, and some other media
I did a few experiments this morning and it looks like:
I can drag & drop an image from Photos to a Markdown document, but that generates a link to the file in the Photos library. Three problems with this, I constantly delete stuff from my Photos Library (my main hobby is photography and I store my images in a Lightroom library), and I use computers with different accounts so the Photos library can be different, and finally, if I export items from the DT database these photos are not included.
If I drag & drop an image to a group, then the image is included in the database, and I can link to it using a standard MD link. It’s also independent of which Apple ID the computer have and it’s included when I export.
So the second alternative seem to be the best route, but I probably have to create some scripts/shortcuts to make this as easy as possible (for example, rename photos, date and location stamp entries based on a photo that is referenced by it, etc)
I’ve only been considering this move for a few days, and I tried to find some info in the forum but there are many things that I haven’t found info about (or haven’t understood). Before digging any deeper into this I would like to ask the following:
Has anyone done something similar? I’ve found a few posts about exporting from Day One and importing into DT, but I’m mostly interested in a scenario where photos is a very big part of the journal. A plain text based journal is simpler, and as I’ve mentioned above I’ve used DT to keep work related notes so I know how to handle that.
What is the best way to organize a journal like this? Once again, I’m thinking of the photos. For a text based journal I’ve used a simple year/month path and then dated files in each month folder, for example “2025-08-14 Decision meeting.md”. Almost all notes would contain at least 1 photo, sometimes up to 20-30. I suspect that would make a year/month organization very messy, the simplest solution that I can come up with is to change the organization to year/month/day which would keep the number of photos in each group/folder at a reasonable level.
Although I don’t like RTF(D) for various reasons, I second The advice of @rmschne. RTFD is basically a folder containing all data referenced in the text.
MD was conceived to make writing HTML easier, it therefore follows its conventions re media.
When I migrated away from Day One I did exports (JSON I think) and imported them into MacJournal (free) which uses RTF and keeps metadata for the maps etc.
I indexed the MacJournal folders in DEVONthink.
It’s more of an archive as I continue my journal in DEVONthink in markdown.
Suggest you play with exporting to MacJournal, if it doesn’t suit you then you can delete.
Yes, it’s certainly an option but I would prefer not to use it. My main reason is simply that over the years I’ve used many different applications to keep track of my notes and markdown has proved to be the format that is easiest to move between applications (before I use an app I make sure that all entries can be exported to format that can be manipulated by a script in a fairly basic way). Other reasons include how easy the entries can be programmatically manipulated, is it easy to use in other apps, etc. An alternative is TextBundle v2 which is basically a folder with a markdown file and media files (i.e. very similar to what I’ve been thinking about).
RTFD/Rich Text is absolutely an alternative, but I would very much like to avoid it.
That’s ok, I guess. These other apps you are alluding to probably make the integration of the text of Markdown and linked graphics look seamless. Using a format that works per your spec helps eliminate the complexity you are trying to avoid by relocating those illusions by code, or something.
Textbundle sounds nice, but there’s precious little software outside the Appleverse that can handle it. You can find some posts on that in the forum, BTW.
So, for MD, I’d also suggest having one group per file and its images. That makes it easier to move to another platform. And use relative links to address the images, like
Off-topic: You didn’t say so, but I assume that you want to mostly see and read the rendered MD, i.e., the final HTML. Which, in my opinion, makes DT perhaps not the best tool for your purpose because it has to re-render the same MD over and over again (each time you want to see it). You can, of course, convert the MD to HTML manually and then look at that. If it were me, I’d also consider a static site generator like Hugo: You “feed” it MD and your media and it generates static HTML whenever something (MD, media, CSS etc) changes.
Yep, for example Day One and Bear handle this very nicely, but they also add a layer of “distance” between me and my notes if I want to automate stuff or do something else. I think Bear is better and more flexible, but in my opinion isn’t really suited for the task I want it to handle. And depending on tool there are also additional problems like where the data is stored (some regulations I need to follow).
Right now, I use Day One for personal stuff, and plain markdown files in directory structure (managed by a Python script) + DT for archiving, storing PDFs, and a bunch of other stuff. But I would like to unify everything I write “under one umbrella” and my experience is that DEVONthink would make this possible + make everything available on mobile where I spend a lot of time. Not to mention that I already use DT.
So yes, moving stuff to DT would make some things more complex, while make some other things possible. In other words, I’m trying to figure out if the added complexity is negated by making other things easier/possible, and if I really should do this.
Yep, Textbundle is a niche thing (although I’m fully Apple so it’s not a real problem) but it’s more the idea of one folder containing everything for that piece of information. I see that some blogging software use a similar approach, for example Blot and Hugo.
Rendered entries are mostly interesting for personal notes, although I don’t think I would use it that much. Work notes are perfectly OK to display as markdown, in fact I rarely render these notes unless I want to generate a PDF to send to someone else.
Work notes == text only, here it’s search that’s important. However, I would probably start to store PDFs here if I would start using DT for this. Only occasionally photos.
Private notes == lots of photos: I only occasionally go back more than two weeks when I view those and then it’s usually to show someone something. I do look at the last two weeks more regularly. So far, it’s seems like DT capabilities to render markdown covers my needs, so I don’t think I would need to use something like Hugo … although that could be an option in the future. I mean I haven’t really tested DT with a markdown file with some 20-30 images … yet.
Thanks for these kind of questions, it forces me to clarify my own thoughts about this (I have a tendency to over-complicate things)
Sorry, I’ve been away a couple of days and have come late to this thread. If that means I’ve skipped through it too quickly and missed salient points do please excuse me.
However, I have used Day One for years, and (as a keen photographer), never add photos to my Day One diary entries. I import my diary entries into DEVONthink every few days, update any cross-reference links to Item Links in DT, convert hashtags to tags (as front matter in a DT markdown file for the relevant entry). It is then that I add any relevant photo. My way of doing so is probably more cumbersome than you’d wish.
My photos are in Capture One as RAW files so I export (say) the relevant image to a folder on my Mac. I rename the photo to the name I wish to use in my diary entry and then import it into a Photos folder for the relevant year of diary entries. I have an AppleScript script called Find newest item in group which:
identifies the current year;
looks in the Photos group for that year;
finds the imported photo (as the most recent item in the group);
gets the Item Link for that photo;
sets up the complete markdown link for the photo (excluding the file extension) and
puts that link on the clipboard.
All that I then have to do is to paste the photo’s link into the diary entry.
Again, apologies if this is all too long-winded and I’ve missed key issues by reading this thread too quickly.
I just did a backup of my Day One account and the backup file is 32+ GB … so yes, I have a fair amount of photos in there. So if I change something, I will do it carefully after quite some consideration !!
Just as an aside, for me the overwhelming advantages of DT over Day One for diary entries are superlative search features in DT compared to the frankly rather pathetic search features of Day One. That said, personally I prefer to Day One interface for writing each entry—given that location, time and weather are recorded (assuming an Internet connection, of course)…and then imported and displayed as part of the entry in DT.
I include those items in my daily journal note, but it’s a copy/paste process
also the tide schedule, sunrise/sunset
I use the Apple Pages editor, saved as .pdf
with the files stored in Devonthink (yyyy-mm-dd groups)
@jem – I am in the same use scenario situation as you, having adopted MD for all its advantages, while at the same time working with images as vital part of my note/knowledge/document setup.
Actually, I think you are representative of a larger cohort of people coming to work with text documents alongside photos/images in the current contexts of standard and global documents formats used nowadays.
This is also, I would think, why the request to include Textbundle format natively withiin DT as document manager is quite frequent around here. A search for it immediately surfaces more than half a dozen explicit requests, while this also regularly comes up as wish within wider context of discussions here.
The good news: DT team seems to have it on its radar, as one of the more recent threads on this topic documents.
And, as @jonmoore correctly pointed out in this thread, while Textbundle is per se not a mainstream format, it has a firm strategic place in exactly this use-scenario you are addressing: modern markdown text and images in multi-app contexts
– … as it is useful & critical especially in terms of requirements of *interoperability*. This is of course because – as you & others here will surely be aware – the combination/pairing of MD-text and image-links/-embeds is notoriously tough to manage from the getgo ( … outside of DEVONthink, that is ).
For that reason it seems indicative that venerable Mac stapleware like Bear, Ulysses, Craft, Marked 2 do support it.
PDF is very good for visible presentation, decent for search, terrible for editing. Markdown is very easy to edit, terrible for presentation.
Importing the image into DT and using DT’s own metadata to caption it requires the least additional software, puts everything in a single application, and is the most likely to work with future versions of DT, but might not be the best approach if you want to share the images with other people.
… yet.
).