DTTG as read-it-later app

DEVONthink To Go
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I would love to be able to use DTTG as my read-it-later app on my phone, similar to Instapaper. Specifically, I want to be able to save “clean” read-to-read versions of web articles, that I can then annotate with highlights and notes frictionlessly while I am reading.

DTTG already handle the saving and easy-to-read format (thank you "clutter free). But highlighting or annotating those saved articles is not as simple.

Of the formats you can save as, there are issues:

  • Markdown lets you add highlights, but to do so you need to switch back and forth between viewing and editing (not a frictionless experience)
  • PDFs let you annotate, but are generated to fit the phone’s window, so when you open them on your desktop, you have small pages with very large text
  • Web Archives generate clean files that sync well with the desktop. And on the desktop you can annotate them. But you cannot annotate them in DTTG (I believe this is a limitation of WebKit?)

Is there any change web archives will allow annotation in the future?

Is there a system for doing this that I am missing?

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When I save PDF’s (created by “sharing” to “print” and putting into DEVONthink ToGo or sometimes into Dropbox for automatic move into DEVONthink) on iPhone and I want to read later, I “add to” Reading List. That Reading list shows up with syncing on all devices. When I view the PDFs on a mac, if the view is too small I simply use the Zoom keys to enlarge. Does this not work for you?

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Tried that but PDFs creates by sharing to print aren’t “clutter free” (which is key for me). And PDFs created by sharing to DTTG are formatted for the mobile device (so very large text on a small page).

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What I do to avoid that issue … show the web page in Reader View, Cmd-P to get the print menu, save to DEVONthink or Dropbox. No clutter.

I send to Dropbox as I have some automation setup with Hazel and PDF Squeezer to squeeze PDFs, sometimes deleting images. Saves “gobs” (technical term) of space.

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I have been there, too.

The price of a better real ‘WYSIWYG’ MD-editor for DTTG (and a little better one for DT), would be to ‘strike two flies in one go’, have a real inroad for more people to use DT as one-stop note-taker; and bucket the ‘read-it later’ bonus ‘on the same run’.

There is so much convenience and sense in avoiding the need for a parallel ‘reader’-system w/ highlights, which one later has to meticulously fuse back into DT somehow. all sorts of practical and cognitive frictions.
and, it really is about a more inclusive ‘save – read – highlight’ scenario, acknowledging all 3 parts are equally and simultaneously impotrtant – just as you describe. so no wonder, you find a lot of requests around the particular issue, and you maybe saw all the others (after doing a simple “read it later” search here).

so, here one take and a possible route to consider, resp. m2c:

for some people it works w/ going MD, and then plugging in external editors. but there is friction, not only for the reading, but also in most scenarios btw. mobile and desktop (often there will be different external editors involved).

for me, the issue was semi-solved by a better way to read and highlight with the (semi-)WYSIWYG-MD-editor on DT4.
now, the missing part is indeed the DTTG one… (and even with the new WYSIWYG experience in DT one has to settle with no way to get rid of / tone down markup codes or differentiate btw. headings and text in terms of further formatting.)

but, if you want to go the MD route, which really brings one more than close to an Instapaper reading experience IMO(!), I think there is one route to get decently close:
use a selected external MD editor which is good for round-tripping and reduces the friction of changing apps to the max; i.e. allows a simple, ‘two click’ path via sharesheet.

– for me that is Ulysses, as one can open DT-files (after downloading ‘clean’ versions to DT flawlessly) in Ulysses, and if you set it up for ‘external folders’ it will directly handle and save every edit in DT. Ulysses allows, unlike DT, for a CSS-set-u of the editor, which can not only bring you very very close to a WYSIWYG-experience, but also to one of your liking.
As anyone coming from the literary world is aware, for a lot of people reading is a very intimate thing and an aesthetic experience alongside a cognitive one. so, this is worth gold. plus one can decently well handle highlighting in the same editor that also allows some pleasant reading experience.
(I one did something likewise with Obisdian once, just to mention that as another possibility to explore; but that was when Omnivore was still around, and that directly plugged into Obsidian, and that could – in turn – be plugged into DT via indexing…; but I am sure there are other plugins allowing RIL via Obsidian, and syncing this with DT)

Maybe that´s a way, until DT hopefully also allows for better MD-editor experience in DTTG (which seems possible, even if I never read that this is on the mind of the dev-team yet.)

So, hopefully threads like yours give further encouragement here. :slightly_smiling_face:

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You are right: reading thoughtfully requires an aesthetic and frictionless interface that allows your thinking about the content to take precedence over thinking about using the app. It’s such a personal choice!

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While I would love to have DTTG become my read-it-later app (and all it really needs is to allow web archives to be annotated), I have found a workaround that might help others.

This requires:

  • DEVONthink
  • Dropbox
  • Feedly (paid account)

Most of my articles come to me via my blog reader Feedly. They have a nice clean interface for reading, highlighting and taking notes. The trouble is, you can’t export those annotations with the usual memberships. But you can have Feedly backup content to Dropbox. And best of all, when Feedly backs up an article, it also includes the highlights and notes you added.

So what I did was this:

  • I created a “board” in Feedly (these are categories for saved articles) called “Add to DEVONthink”.
  • I connected my Feedly account to Dropbox (instructions). This makes Feedly create a Dropbox folder for every board you have. When you add an article to a board, it saves an HTML copy of it to its respective folder.
  • I indexed the Dropbox folder “Add to DEVONthink” to my DT database.

So now, after I read and annotate an article in Feedly, if I want it imported into DT I just add it to the board “Add to DEVONthink”. And the article gets automatically added to my DT database, annotations and all.

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