I have no need for thumbnails. I went to Settings > Files > Thumbnails and unchecked all of the checkboxes to the right of Create Thumbnails. If I exit DT3 and restart it these settings are unchanged … but DT3 informs me it is Creating Thumbnails (by way of a small box in the lower left of the UI).
Luckily I can stop this by clicking the X next to the message. A good thing too, since until I cancel this DT3 is completely unusable, even though it is only pegging one of the 8 cores/16 hyperthreads of my MBPs i9 CPU. (I have imported 80GB of notes from Evernote, so this could go on for days, and in the meantime I can’t use DT3 at all.)
Am I missing something, or is there no way to disable thumbnail generation completely?
Most likely items are already in the thumbnailing queue, in this case changing the preferences doesn’t have any impact anymore. Just quit DEVONthink, delete the folder ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Pending and launch it again.
I don’t have bosconi’s concern about thumbnails, but I did take a look at my ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Pending directory.
Should that directory be empty when there no pending operations? Mine includes a dozen folders with names that appear to be item links (“2743A5FC-D85A-4942-AC12-1A6A00619AFF”, as in “x-devonthink-item://2743A5FC-D85A-4942-AC12-1A6A00619AFF”) but most don’t seem to point to any existing database or group or document. Several are as old as 2019. None is more recent than two weeks ago. If I quit DT3, they aren’t deleted. Are these perhaps remnants of some interrupted operation that DT3 was unable to complete? Should I/can I delete them?
There’s no need to delete the empty folders, the actual operation queue is stored in files if necessary.
Actually users should never delete anything in DEVONthink’s application folder (except custom templates, scripts and .log files) unless instructed to do so.
I have studiously followed the instructions here re deleting the Pending folder and yet DT Pro 3.9.8 continues to create thumbnails for all Markdown files. Shown in the attached screenshot are my settings.
How can I completely disable thumbnail generation? I recently updated a set of more than 3000 notes using a command-line search and replace via sed and DT is grinding my machine into the ground with the thumbnail generation activity.
From what I understand, the thumbnail preferences have no retroactive effect. They only affect thumbnail creation for new database items. Each item has its own independent thumbnail: TRUE/FALSE flag.
At some point I thought thumbnails were mostly distracting me and taking up space for no benefit, so I disabled them. This stopped thumbnails being generated for new items. To get rid of existing thumbnails, I used the command Data > Thumbnails > Remove.
I still have most thumbnails disabled. As a little test, I just created a thumbnail for a markdown document (Data > Thumbnails > Create). Then I made some edits. The thumbnail updated automatically, even though markdown is disabled in my thumbnails preferences.
I like that I can disable thumbnails generally, but use them for select files.
If it doesn’t make your machine freeze… You can try a search that finds all documents of the filetype(s) you use for notes. Select all, then use Data > Thumbnails > Remove. Maybe that will remove them from the thumbnailing queue? I don’t know – maybe it’s best to see what BLUEFROG says.
It is not an issue, it is behaviour I expect and want. It was only an example to illustrate. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough.
I have thumbnails for markdown off. I can still enable thumbnails for specific documents—independent of the global setting—with Data > Thumbnails > Create. A thumbnail created this way updates automatically when I save the document.
I take it @stuartro only changed the thumbnail settings after noticing a slowdown. It makes sense this has no effect. If deleting ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Pending has no effect, maybe the thumbnail queue is rebuilt when launching DEVONthink, and it is necessary to manually remove the thumbnails from the 3000 updated notes with Data > Thumbnails > Remove?
Thanks for the quick reply. I’m running this on both Sonoma (14.7.2) and Sequoia (15.1.1). Part of the issue seems to be that I have an AppleScript that assigns a custom icon to each of the notes that I create, based on the note’s “type” (e.g. a note of type “code/swift” has the Swift icon applied to it).
It seems that DT is assuming that since I have applied a custom icon—even though I’ve explicitly turned off Markdown thumbnail generation—the moment I save the file my custom icon (the Swift logo, in this case) disappears and is replaced with the DT-generated Markdown thumbnail.
This should, to my mind, not be the case. If I turn off thumbnail generation in settings, then DT should follow the settings.
Does this behaviour “make sense” to you both, and if so, can there be a fix provided, please?
I can’t speak on behalf of development regarding any fixes but my question is: have you verified the behavior doesn’t happen with Markdown documents you’re not applying a custom icon too?
PS: Sequoia is at 15.2. You should keep up to date, especially with how buggy Sequoia has been.
I just ran the following experiment (in DT Pro 3.9.8 on Sequoia 15.1.1):
IN DEVONTHINK:
Create new note in DT “manually”, using Data > New from Template > Productivity > Daily Journal — Markdown*.
︎ Note has plain Markdown icon in DT / no thumbnail.
Open the note (Cmd+O) in a new DT window
︎ Note still has plain Markdown icon and no thumbnail.
Edit the note and save in DT
︎ Note still has plain Markdown icon and no thumbnail.
IN TYPORA:
Open the note in Typora (external editor)
︎ Note still has plain Markdown icon in DT / no thumbnail.
Edit the note in Typora and save
After a few seconds DT updates its text display in the note.
︎ Note still has plain Markdown icon in DT / no thumbnail.
IN DEVONTHINK:
Copy an icon from an existing note
Cmd+Shift+I on the note with the custom icon. - Select the icon from the image well and press Cmd+C.
Switch back to test note (in DT)
Apply the icon to the test note
Cmd+Shift+I on the test note
Select the icon from the image well and press Cmd+V.
︎ Test note now has custom icon in DT
Edit the note and save in DT
︎ Note still has custom icon in DT.
IN TYPORA:
Switch to the Typora window.
Change the text and hit Cmd+S
✘ Note’s custom icon disappears and is replaced with a DT-generated Markdown thumbnail.
It seems that DT doesn’t like notes that have had a custom icon applied being edited by external editors. For good measure I repeated the above exercise, this time using VS Code to edit the Markdown note instead, and got the same results.
Re Sequoia 15.2, I’m in a critical work phase at the moment and read a number of articles online of folks having their Apple Studio Displays bricked by Sequoia 15.2. So far nothing else is broken (at least, that I’m aware of :-)).
I repeated the same exercise in DT Pro 3.9.8 on Sonoma 14.7.2 and got the same results. That is, this appears to be a DT issue and not an OS bug (unless the OS bug is common to both versions of macOS, which is, of course, possible). Either way, it’s annoying.
When I read this thread my first thought was: Isn’t Typora an Electron app and VS Code a Microsoft app—and Microsoft is known for doing things their own way. So maybe it’s these two external editors and their idiosyncrasies that make the customized thumbnails vanish.
But I was wrong. Out of curiosity I tested a number of Markdown editors (MultiMarkdown Composer, 1Writer, iA Writer, all not Electron apps) and I can confirm what @stuartro wrote. After editing and saving a file with any of these Markdown editors its customized icon gets replaced by a thumbnail.
I’ve never used custom thumbnails for files, only groups, so I’ve never encountered this. But I can confirm the same behaviour on macOS Ventura 13.7.2. (tested with a markdown file)
I don’t think this has anything to do with the specific editor – it is simply any external editor. I guess it has something to do with DEVONthink registering filesystem events and updating the database record, in combination with how it handles thumbnails.
︎ Note has plain Markdown icon in DT / no thumbnail.