Today we’re releasing updates for two of our smaller apps: DEVONagent Pro 3.12 and DEVONsphere Express 1.9.10. Both are compatible with macOS 27 Golden Gate and share a set of fixes to their search engine, but DEVONagent Pro also gets a visual makeover that makes it feel at home on current versions of macOS. Please note that both apps now require macOS 13.5 Venturaor later.
DEVONagent Pro finally supports dark mode. Its toolbar now uses SF Symbols with a more refined layout, and we have modernized the search windows, progress indicators, buttons, and the Download Manager throughout the interface. The built-in browser gets better along with Cloudflare-protected sites, and DEVONagent Pro respects a site’s robots.txt even if it lists several user agents in one group. With this release we have also retired the Express and Lite editions and removed support for the dusty Automator.
DEVONsphere Express gets a subtle cosmetic update, including new SF Symbols icons in the Preferences toolbar. It also parses dates more reliably when indexing PDF documents.
You can find a complete list of all improvements by choosing Help > Release Notes inside each application. We recommend these updates to all users of DEVONagent Pro and DEVONsphere Express. Get them by using the applications’ update function or from our Download page. If you downloaded DEVONagent Pro from the App Store, update it from the App Store app.
As a fan of all things DevonTech I’ve purchased both DEVONagent and DEVONsphere, but they never quite stuck in my workflow like DT4/DT2G. Now with DT4’s AI integration with LLM and external search engines would seem to provide similar functionality to these 2 other apps.
Am I drawing the wrong conclusions, or is there a case to be made for using Agent and Sphere alongside DT4?
DevonSphere in particular is a much more lightweight tool than DT, much less DT + an LLM.
DevonAgent allows you to define specific search parameters and save them for repeated use. If you know what you’re looking for, that’s likely to be more efficient than trying to explain it to an LLM.
DEVONsphere Express is not expressly (no pun intended… I think ) for use with DEVONthink. It is able to integrate with it but it’s really either (1) a Spotlight replacement or (2) an extension of EasyFind that works with more than text-based document types.
DEVONagent is essentially for online research, intended for focused searches, including the ability send a query to multiple sites, look for different types of assets via the scanners, run scheduled tasks, see conceptual connections beyond specific pages via the Digest, etc. Also, you’re not paying token prices via an API or developer account, to do these searches.
I updated to version 3.12, but I don’t see an option to toggle dark mode (running macOS Golden Gate 27.0.1 with the system default set to dark mode). I am sure this is a user error, but could you point me to how to turn the dark mode setting on?
@cgrunenberg Unfortunately, rebooting didn’t fix the appearance. I also toggled the “Appearance” system setting between dark and light, but nothing changed.
But I didn’t like the effect then – too many clashing UI elements. I don’t remember if I set it to true again or deleted the key afterwards. Does such a preference key become more “sticky” if you manually change the value? I wonder if DEVONagent was somehow blocked from automatically deleting it when I updated to 3.12.
I also tried deleting the whole preference file to get a clean one for comparison. I didn’t notice any obvious difference aside from missing all my other preferences, so I restored the previous one.
(The linked post claimed that “DevonTechnologies enforced using Light-Mode by setting a flag called ‘NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance’”. If true I guess that wasn’t done via a preference but somewhere else.)
Yeah that’s what I thought.
The post does say to undo by deleting the key. I apparently set it to true instead without thinking about potential issues like here.
) for use with DEVONthink. It is able to integrate with it but it’s really either (1) a Spotlight replacement or (2) an extension of EasyFind that works with more than text-based document types.
