DEVONthink To Go, Drafts, and Save in Place

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Discussing about the note taking app Drafts over there reminded me of something I wanted to ask about a while ago—and did, over there in the Drafts forum, but forget to continue here. Until now:

Drafts has a feature called Bookmarks. A Bookmark is part of an action for exporting notes. It is where the user saves the location where they want to export a note to. On a Mac it is simply the file path, and on the Mac the action equally simply just saves the file in that location. On iOS and iPadOS devices this very basic procedure is not that simple.

When you start an action with a Bookmark for the first time, you pick a destination and after that the action uses it without prompting the user. The destinations can be located on the device, on iCloud Drive, or in an app (“Save in Place”).

So theoretically one could create actions to save Drafts notes to specific DTTG databases or groups. But only theoretically. Because while it is possible to move through all levels of DTTG’s group/folder structure when trying to create a Bookmark, it is not possible to save that location. »Save« is greyed out.

According to the developer of Drafts this is why:

To appear in the Files app on iOS, apps implement File Provider extensions. Not all apps implement all options of these extensions. In fact most only implement a subset and are not compatible with Bookmarks as a result.

This implies—and please note, I’m paraphrasing, not stating!—that you did not implement all options of the File Provider extensions in DTTG. Is that correct? And if so, is it intended and to what purpose?

Or is it just another limitation of iOS/iPadOS?

Maybe it is important to add that the Drafts action »Save to Files« which prompts the user to pick a location, works just fine with DTTG. So could the limitation (of whatever origin) be that user interaction per file is mandatory?

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@eboehnisch could comment further if he desires but databases in DEVONthink To Go are not built as folders in a filesystem, just as DEVONthink’s groups don’t exist outside the application.

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Stupid question: Wouldn’t it be possible to modify the “Save to File” action so that it saves the file to a predefined folder?
I can’t check as I don’t have the Drafts Pro edition.

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The “Save to File” actions contains of a single action step called “Export” which has no field for the destination. It does not have to because it is meant to prompt the user. The Bookmark is used in an action step called “File”. Quite confusing.

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Can you post the action code?

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There is no code. Both actions contain of a single step, “File” and “Export”, that allow some settings, and that’s it.

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The whole “file system” that DTTG presents it fully virtual. That is what the file provider mechanism was all about and how it is used by us but also, e.g., Dropbox and other cloud drive services. When Apple added “folder picking” they bolted it on and did not add any virtual file system methods but allowed only sharing real folders.

That would simply mean that for this to work we’d need to replicate the whole group structure inside the DTTG databases as files and folders and keep it all in sync, bidirectionally. We were hoping that Apple would give products like Dropbox or DTTG better options but in the last few iterations of iOS Apple has worked little on file providers, unfortunately.

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Very interesting insights, thank you.

And it is how I expected—if it was straightforward, you would have done it already.

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I think that can be accomplished with a Shortcut involving the actions Get Draft, Run Action on Draft and DT’s Create Item.

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Yes, there are other ways.

X-Url is one of them, but this action can only move one note at a time.

X-Url-Callback allows batch apply, but it means a permanent switching from Drafts to DTTG and back to the foreground.

The File action, if it was possible, would have allowed batch apply and would not start DTTG at all—as it does not with DT on the Mac.

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A follow up question: Since iOS/iPadOS is what it is (restricted in many ways compared to a desktop OS with its file system), wouldn’t it be useful if DTTG had an “Inbox” folder on, say, iCloud Drive like DT on the Mac has in the Finder? And if it just dragged everything in that folder in?

Of course, there are no Smart Rules in DTTG which could automatically move the files in other databases (and that’s where the Global Inbox gets really interesting).

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Are you aware that you can set DTTG as a location in Files on i*OS? (Just mentioning in case you aren’t aware of that. It’s handy.)

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Of course. That’s what this thread is about—it works fine when you save manually. But you cannot automatize it with a File action.

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