I recently opened up Devonthink 3 on my iMac (macOS Monterey - 12.4) and then opened the preferences pane. As soon as I click on anything on the preferences panel (a tab at the top or a checkbox) Devonthink crashes and disappears from screen.
If I restart it, I get a warning that my databases are still open, and then if I click on ‘Continue’ Devonthink doesn’t display the screen. If I go down to my dock and then select the dock icon, it shows it as open, and if I click on that, the screen eventually appears. Then I have to open all of my databases again.
It does this every time I open the Preferences pane.
I have uninstalled and then reinstalled Devonthink, which at first, I thought had solved the issue, but after making a few changes in the preferences pane, I then clicked on the colors tab, and the whole thing crashed again.
This has only been an issue since updating to Devonthink 3.8.4.
Has anyone else had this issue, or know of a resolution?
Thanks for the report!
This is an unfortunate regression in the Standard edition.
Here is a link to the 3.8.3 release: DEVONthink 3.8.3
Alternatively you could also upgrade to a higher edition.
Many thanks, Bluefrog, for the link to 3.8.3. I’ll rollback to that for the immediate future, as I had no problems with this at all.
I’m intrigued by your suggestion to upgrade, though. Are those completely different builds? Are you saying I wouldn’t experience the same problem with the premium product?
(I think what has spooked me is that I’ve made the decision to go “all in” with Devonthink as my primary notetaker/storage/PKM system, and then this happened! )
To the best of my knowledge the three product iterations are identical; presumably the routine for hiding certain preferences in the Standard edition is causing the problem - that routine is presumably never called in the Pro and Server editions (or something like that, but you get my drift; I only surmise what might be going on at a technical level because it sometimes triggers Criss or Eric to correct me, expanding my knowledge each time they do).
I think the speed with which DT have responded and offered a solution is a good reason not to be spooked. Sure, I like it better when there are no bugs, too. But seeing as that is a non-realistic proposition, the next best thing is a company who own up, provide a temporary solution and get on with fixing things.
I’m now playing on my laptop, which also has version 3.8.4 installed, and I get the same crash when I try to do anything with the preferences. So thanks again for the link to 3.8.3!
@BLUEFROG: is the team planning to wait and include this fix in the “next release” that includes new features? Because I think this bug seems severe enough to deserve a considerable priority so users don’t wait too long.
Whilst I cannot speak for DT, which features of 3.8.4 make it urgent to use 3.8.4 as opposed to 3.8.3, and how often do you need to change preferences? I’m not actually contradicting you (I think to expect an interim release which deals solely with the regression is reasonable on the face of it), just wondering out loud.
There is the other consideration that that interim update would be downloaded automatically for all users (including Pro and Server) whilst not actually serving them.
There aren’t new features coming per se. However, there are a few fixes that also demand our attention in the release, including a crash with Dropbox’s API.
No particular feature is making me stay on 3.8.4. Well, I’m very much looking forward to change the setting that disables the automatic ‘mark as read’ that got introduced in 3.8.4, but the fact that the Preferences pane crashes prevents me from doing so.
I guess I wasn’t seriously considering going back to 3.8.3, thinking that something might go wrong.
I understand. By ’ “next release” that includes new features ’ I didn’t necessarily mean new features, but instead it was a way to try to refer to a possible release that would still be months away.
I appreciate you are working on other bug fixes that you also want to release along with this one.
Thanks.
)
