DT ist very energy consuming

DEVONthink
1

Hi everybody,

Does anyone else experience that DT is very energy consuming. I am using a MacBook Pro and DT is always shown to be an energy hog. It is really annoying, as usually I have something like 10 hours of battery, but with DT active I only have something like 4 hours. I am traveling a lot, so that is really annoying. Can I do something about it?

Thanks in advance

2

How many and how large are your databases, as shown in File > Database Properties?

3

It doesn’t seem to affect the consumption of my Macbook Pro (2019) all that much, but I am usually just working with plain text files (and with few databases open).

1 Like
4

I have 36 databases that are open and they range from a few MB to 30 GB

5

And how do you synchronize them? Do you use scheduled smart rules or reminders or do the databases contain RSS feeds?

6

I use iCloud synchronization. No RSS feeds. No smart rules and no reminders

7

Changing the schedule of the synchronization, e.g. instead of automatic only once per hour or manually, might reduce this.

8

I’m curious what your topical breakdown for 36 databases is.

9

I have my files divided in to topics. So e.g.
“Clinic”
“Books”
“Tax”
“Finances”
“Sport”
“Music”
“Contracts”

etc.

10

Will try that … Thanks

11

Nice!
Thanks for sharing.

12

Would you recommend to have another way to organize my files?

13

Open up the Activity Monitor app on the Mac and look at what is happening in the Energy tag and the Disk tag, that should give more clues what is happening.

I.e. if the Energy values for DT3 are high and lots of I/O traffic with DT3 it gives a clue that DT3 is doing a lot of disk reads (and writes) that will eat the battery lifetime.

14

I was already having a look, but only paying attention to the percentage of the usage. Will have a closer look on the details.

Thanks for the input !

15

Nope. If that makes sense to you, go for it.
The only thing I would suggest is closing databases you don’t actively need open. The odds are you don’t use all 36 daily, or at least not all day long.

16

You can also run some experiments.

  1. Is the energy use coming when you are using DT, or for processes that run in background when you are doing something else? Check “12 hour Power” at some time, then don’t use DT for the next hour and check it again. (There may be a more straightforward way to run this experiment, but IDK the innards of Activity Monitor.)
  2. What happens to energy use if you close half of your databases?
17

I don’t know if it would affect things, but I have the equivalent of your topics in one database as top level groups. I have one database per year e.g. “2020” and a “General” database for stuff like manuals and whatnot. So usually I have 1-3 databases open and experience no power issues.