Can't open Devonthink 3 - get spinning beach ball and have to force quit

DEVONthink
1

I can’t open DEVONthink 3 (version 3.9.8) on macOS (15.3.1). I get the warning ‘Inbox already open continue or cancel’. If I cancel, DT3 opens, but immediately I try to open another database, even a very light one, I’m back to the spinning beach ball.

I deleted the inbox and opened, and this seemed to work. but again, when I tried to open another database, back to the spinning beach ball.

My inbox in ~/library/application support/DEVONthink 3 is 4.3 GB (I know, I shouldn’t let it get so big but move files out… I was planning to do that…) - and I’d hate to loose that data. I have a backup in my Time Machine and I restored that, but same problem with spinning beach ball.

Any ideas?

2

Is this a new installation?

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DEVONthink 3 just started freezing on my MacBook Air today. macOS 15.3.1, and I assume DEVONthink is 3.9.8. I was using it just fine yesterday and had scan a bunch of documents in. I rebooted my laptop earlier today and when I went to use DEVONthink it just hung.

After seeing someone else was having the same problem, I tried DEVONthink (3.9.8) on my Mac mini running 15.3.1. DEVONthink started up just fine on the Mac mini and when it finished syncing it seemed to have all the documents that I added yesterday.

Activity Monitor say DEVONthink on the laptop is not responding an force quitting and restart has the same result.

Help!

4

Welcome @dlb
Well, we haven’t issued any application updates and it is working fine on your Mac Mini, so… what changed on your Air? Did you update it to 15.3.1 recently?

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The Air was running 15.3.1 yesterday and DEVONthink was working fine then.

I rebooted into recovery mode and ran First Aid in Disk Utility. I claimed to have fixed a problem. When I rebooted DEVONthink was running fine again.

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Thanks for the follow-up!
Do you recall the issue Disk First Aid found?

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Hi Jim, no not new. I’m a DT and DT3 user over many years…
Everything was running fine until it wasn’t …
I have 15 databases of varying sizes
Joe

8

It’s late here in Scotland, I’ll try dlb’s first aid trick tomorrow morning…

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OK, thanks for the comments - I deleted DT3 app, restored all my databases from Time Machine, reinstalled the app, did a first aid on my SSD, then (the 'ol favourite) rebooted my MacBook again, and all is working swimmingly!

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