Bug Report: "Clip to DEVONthink" Safari Extension — Click Does Nothing

DEVONthink Feedback
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Environment

  • DEVONthink: 4.3 (upgraded from 4.2)

  • macOS: Tahoe 26.5 (Build 25F71)

  • Safari: 26.5

  • Mac: MacBook Pro M3 Max, 128 GB RAM

Summary

After upgrading to DEVONthink 4.3, the “Clip to DEVONthink” Safari extension (also version 4.3) does nothing when clicked. The toolbar button click produces no visible response — no clipping dialog, no error, no feedback. The Share menu “Add to DEVONthink” entry also does nothing when selected.

What I’ve Already Tried (All Failed)

  1. Re-enabled the extension in Safari Settings > Extensions after the upgrade disabled it

  2. Verified website access is set to “All Websites” with full permissions

  3. Verified DEVONthink appears under System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions > Sharing

  4. defaults delete com.devon-technologies.think LSRegisterVersion + quit both apps + relaunch DEVONthink first

  5. pluginkit -r / pluginkit -a / pluginkit -e use -i com.devon-technologies.think.clipper

  6. Unchecked “Share across devices” in Safari Extensions

  7. Removed quarantine attribute (xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine)

  8. Deleted and recreated the extension’s sandbox container (~/Library/Containers/com.devon-technologies.think.clipper)

  9. Clean reinstall: downloaded DEVONthink.app.zip directly from devontechnologies.com, replaced the app in /Applications, verified code signature, relaunched

Diagnostic Findings

Using log stream to capture system logs while clicking the extension button, I can see the following sequence:

The extension receives the click and processes it — but DEVONthink never responds.

Timeline of a single click (condensed from full log):

17:08:33.563 Safari:  Activating XPC connection to com.devon-technologies.think.clipper.apple-extension-service
17:08:33.564 Clipper: "beginning extension request"
17:08:33.564 Clipper: "_willPerformHostCallback" (error: null) — callback executes successfully
17:08:38.624 Safari:  Activates SECOND XPC connection (5 seconds later — retry/fallback?)
17:08:38.624 Clipper: Second "beginning extension request", callback (error: null)
17:08:38.645 Clipper: LaunchServices.launchViaCSUA — "LAUNCH: Asking CSUI to launch 1 items"
                      (Extension tries to hand off to DEVONthink via LaunchServices)
17:08:54.624 Clipper: "completing request" — tears down after 16-second timeout
17:08:54.624 Clipper: xpc_connection_cancel() — gives up

DEVONthink’s main process logged ZERO extension-related activity during this entire window — only Spotlight indexing and cursor updates. The LaunchServices.launchViaCSUA call never reaches DEVONthink.

Also noted at extension bootstrap (Error level):

[com.apple.PlugInKit:subsystems] Bootstrapping; external subsystem UIKit_PKSubsystem refused setup

I have a full 451-line diagnostic log (log show output covering Safari + Clip to DEVONthink processes during the click) that I can provide once my forum account allows attachments.

1 Like
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Welcome @scott.sovereign
Note: External AI is not a reliable support resource, especially for very specific software like DEVONthink. It not only often gives incorrect information, it also over-complicates things, and leads people on wild goose chases, as is shown here.

macOS Tahoe is still a buggy mess and likely will receive minimal effort from Apple as they’ll surely charge toward another autumn premature OS release. We have had it working perfectly fine and a handful of people spontaneously report it’s missing again… then returns, despite no change in code on our part.

The browser extension is not required for web clipping, as shown here…

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Point taken. However, none of the “solutions” you present, while they are a way to get content into DT, aren’t truly web clipping. I have only purchased DT Pro in recent months, and this is the first post I have made on this forum. I thought the bug report would be appreciated, but it seems to have touched a raw nerve, unless I am misunderstanding your reply. That was certainly not my intent, but I do know that when I first installed DT a month or so ago (the previous version), I had to search to figure out how to get the web clipping extension working. I found out how to do it, but it didn’t work out of the box. Now it doesn’t work at all, even after trying these same solutions. I haven’t had any of these problems with any other web clipping extension in Safari. I don’t mean that to sound like a complaint, but I thought by sharing the information I did, you would find it useful toward fixing the problem.

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No raw nerve at all and I didn’t detect any complaining on your part. I was just letting you know that AI is not a good resource for such questions and often leads to wasted time and more frustration for people. (And yes, I get support tickets similar to this.)

As far as getting the Safari extension to work, it should only require enabling it in Safari’s Extensions settings.

However, none of the “solutions” you present, while they are a way to get content into DT, aren’t truly web clipping.

They absolutely are “truly web clipping” :slight_smile: In fact, the browser extension is just a push button to open the Sorter’s web clipping pane, just as the hotkey does. In fact, people I’ve recommended the hotkey method to have all returned and said “Wow… that works even better!”

2 Likes
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The problem all along had nothing to do with anything either of us had previously mentioned. In an effort to clean up my menu bar, I had disabled the “Allow in Menu Bar” setting for DT. I didn’t realize that it would have this effect. After reenabling it (which, BTW, was suggested by Claude Code Opus 4.7), everything works exactly as it should. This includes both the web clipping extension and the Sorter (which also wasn’t working with it disabled - that’s how Claude was able to find the problem).

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Yes, this is something we just encountered within the past week as well.