Short story is I have went full in on devonthink and am mainly mobile throughout the day, maybe only touching my home mac once a week on the weekends. I like the idea of a daily or weekly note and obsidian does this wonderfully, but I have had issues re-creating this with DTTG (there have been some issues with the shortcuts which the devs are helping with so this is much appreciated).
Essentially my shortcuts are just search for “todays date daily note” and if present append, if not make it and add the text. Same for “week date weekly note.”
The biggest limitations I see when working with mobile has been that the ios Files app does give applications access to the devonthink “file structure” (which is really just a representation of the groups from database as I understand it). This works great to open and edit documents with another markdown editor, but you can not access this with shortcuts. With other text editors it is very easy to make a shortcut that looks for the markdown file and either append or make a new one. This is native to ios, and doesn’t even require the app to have shortcuts. The problem with just “indexing” the folder is that this is not currently possible on ios, so still requires a Mac to do at some point in the process. (I have tried with obsidian to do this and get many errors and is a hassle to clean up, so I am using DT and DTTG only).
Questions:
1 - is there any way to make the “Devonthink” folder in ios Files app also exposed to shortcuts (would greatly simply shortcuts to achieve what I am looking to do above).
2 - would there be an option to allow DTTG to have a native folder on the mobile device that would sync to the database (for example a local ios folder where you could make shortcuts and place documents that would be seen by devonthink and included with the database). As I am not a programmer I don’t even know if this is possible, but it would open a lot of possibilities with the mobile app.
3 - Could a daily/weekly/monthly etc document be an option to add as a direct shortcut built into DTTG be an easier solution?
I don’t think I am alone in trying to use daily/weekly etc notes, but it really is so simple in obsidian and I wish DTTG had this ability. While the whole calendar plug in is great in obsidian, even any plain text file/folder structure is so easy to automate with ios natively now this would solve problems (but there is no way to automate it currently to DTTG).
I would appreciate any other thoughts or ideas of how to go forward on this, and appreciate any thoughts from the devs as I know they continue to add functionality to DTTG. Ideally would like to go all mobile (it feels so close but seems like another app is needed to get what I want).
Options 1 or 2 would be great (not sure if feasible with iOS, sounds like it isn’t).
With regards to 3 it currently doesn’t work as expected which is why I’m looking for suggestions. (Dev is already helping out and looking into the code, sounds like issues with the search and accurately identifying files, so if present want it to append, instead it just keeps making new files each time).
Dev is already helping out and looking into the code, sounds like issues with the search and accurately identifying files, so if present want it to append, instead it just keeps making new files each time).
And to clarify, making a shortcut for template is very easy (and works). The problem is there are some issues with searching for an existing document and appending if present. For example let’s say I make a shortcut that says weekly note if present append, if not present then make new weekly note. This will make a new note if none exists. If you run it again it will just make the new note and not append the note (as the search does not find the first note as expected).
This had been working on one of the TestFlights and back on production but no longer working.
My workflow I am trying to replicate is to quickly add one and 2 line items (very bullet journal esque) to the daily or weekly note depending on my context. What I’m left with is about 20 daily notes with same date at end of day instead of one note with appended text.
Hopefully that clarifies?
Edit:
My current workaround is just making the daily and weekly notes into a markdown document within files folder structure. Works great and doesn’t require any special shortcuts outside of native iOS and is rock solid stable. I just have to manually import all the files at regular intervals to get into DTTG. It’s an extra step and want to do it all through DTTG so I can use the item link to reference in calendar for meetings etc. This simplicity was why I asked about option 1 and 2, since initially my thought was just make a shortcut to save to the Devonthink folder on iOS files but shortcuts can’t access it.
I noticed that for a few other apps. I assumed this is a iOS issue unfortunately but wanted to check.
I also tried to “bookmark” the file with toolbox pro which is an older work around for saving files before the expanded shortcut options in IOS and it is grayed out there too, as well as my synology drive.
I use a daily note; a combination planner/journal/dashboard
It’s auto-created each morning on my Mac Mini from a template
via an applescript
tagged as Type-Journal
with a link added to my calendar (Apple)
The daily note is auto-sync’d to my iPad
There is a link on my home screen, via the calendar widget
The home screen also includes an icon that links to my journal notes via the shortcut feature
