Are documents really purged when using the "Retain" setting?

DEVONthink To Go
1

I have not much disk space left on my iPad. Therefore I want to reduce the amount of storage used for DTTG4 by setting the “Retain” slider (In the Synchronisation section) from “All items” to “500”:

Setting DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 16.09.48
Setting DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 16.09.481600×1356 200 KB

Here the storage amount DTTG4 used before I changed the Retain value:

iPad storage BEFORE DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 15.13.53
iPad storage BEFORE DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-04 at 15.13.531629×267 20.6 KB

And here the storage amount DTTG4 used after I changed the Retain value:

iPad storage AFTER DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-05 at 08.32.06
iPad storage AFTER DTTG doc limits_Screenshot 2026-02-05 at 08.32.061648×267 20.8 KB

Clearly no disk space freed up. :unamused_face: What is going wrong here?

Many thanks for pointers!

2
  • There’s no information on your databases to determine what kind of effect purging would have. I know you use a ton of Markdown, which are all tiny files. Purging them wouldn’t have much appreciable effect.
  • Take the space reports from iOS with a big grain of salt.
  • The space used is not all document data. There is application support, sync information, the searchable index, thumbnails (if enabled), Spotlight metadata (if enabled), …
3

Thanks for chiming in!

Interesting. This raises for me the question: What does purging do? I thought it means the document file itself is removed. I have at least as many PDFs as MDs, so removing the PDF files should do quite a bit.

True, but 5GB is a lot of storage. Ikd say a significant part if this are documents files.

Good hint! So I better switch them off. Where in DTTG do I disable thumbnails and Spotlight metadata?

4

Purging removes the contents of a file, leaving its metadata behind.

  • Disable Spotlight via Settings > Sharing & Spotlight.
  • Disable thumbnails globally by going into a database, tapping the View Options bottom toolbar button, and unchecking View > Thumbnails.
1 Like
5

It depends on what kind of PDFs they are. Do they contain a lot of images? If they’re mainly text, I wouldn’t expect much of a difference.

DT indexes the text content of your files for searching. So even if the files are purged, the text remains in the search index.

1 Like