I just realized that the shortcut that gave me the error message is now at the bottom of the list. That is, I removed it, thinking that it no longer worked. I cannot recall how it came back - the new iPhone installation wasn’t smooth with the known problems that were fixed with an update. You probably tried this already but did you try to remove it, from the share menu?
Thanks for your suggestion. I did try to change the setting for showing it in the share sheet, but the problem persists.
I’ve been reluctant to delete the original shortcut because it was a lot of work to create (the editor on the phone is so tedious and frustrating), but upon reflection, the ability to export and import shortcuts makes this reluctance unfounded, so I tried it just now. For the record, here is the procedure I followed:
- on macOS, in the Shortcuts app, exported all the shortcuts I have for DEVONthink
- deleted them
- back on my phone, waited for the Shortcuts app to update (i.e., for my DEVONthink shortcuts to disappear)
- powered down and restarted the phone
- opened DEVONthink To Go, let it sync
- opened the Shortcuts editor on the phone, created a brand-new shortcut, containing just the DEVONthink Create Item action (same as described above, again)
- ran it manually from the Shorcuts app on the phone
The error still occurs. Here are 2 screenshots to show exactly what this looked like:
Mike
I also downloaded the shortcut on my iPad, and it works fine for me as well. Let me know if there is anything I can try for you.
Have you tried to rebuild it step by step, testing it at every step? I am not as good as you are with these things but if I can run or test something, let me know.
Olaf
Hey Olaf – it’s been nice to see old colleagues active in these forums!
Thank you very much for your kind offer of additional testing. I don’t think the problem would be solved by rebuilding the original shortcut (at least, not at this time) because as shown above, a brand-new shortcut containing nothing more than a single Create Item step fails. Single-stepping this new shortcut (and my original, longer one) shows the failure is always the same error (“There was a problem communicating with the app”). This failure happens even if the shortcut doesn’t reference any of my databases (well, other than Inbox) and uses no variables! The test shortcut is as simple as it can be, and it still fails in my environment, on two different Apple devices.
Multiple people have now tested this and it has always worked for them, so the root cause of the failure is almost certainly something about my iOS environment or settings or Apple account. The mystery is made more perplexing by the fact that I haven’t done anything other than update the version of iOS and the version DEVONthink To Go.
Have you updated to 17.0.3 on your device and tried the shortcut again? I’m wondering if Apple broke something and it will now be magically fixed with the latest iOS update.
I just updated last night, hoping for the same magic. Unfortunately, it fails the same way!
Today the Email myself shortcut failed when I tried to share webcontent. This was because of a privacy setting. Maybe that is a hint? (This is a new thing for me)
I have this same exact issue on iOS (17.0.3), however NOT on iPadOS.
I didn’t even need to download the shortcut mentioned above, I just setup a very simple shortcut to create a new text document. Fails in iOS (below), but the same shortcut runs just fine on my iPad.
Very bizarre.
iPhone 12 Pro Max
2018 iPad Pro 11’’
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What are you doing with the destination there?
Do you have the error if you enter some text in the action?
Thanks for the idea. It seems likely that if it were a privacy setting, the error message would be more similar to what you got, but who knows? I did try some changes:
- In DTTG settings:
- turn off DTTG security completely
- turn off Spotlight
- In iOS system settings, for Shortcuts:
- Location is on (set to While Using)
- Advanced ▹ Allow Running Scripts on
- Advanced ▹ Allow Sharing Large Amounts of Data on
- In iOS system settings, for Privacy & Security:
- Location Services is While Using
- Photos for DEVONthink is Full Access
- Local Network for DEVONthink is on
- Microphone for DEVONthink is on
- Camera for DEVONthink is on
- Files and Folders for DEVONthink is on
- Sensitive Content Warning is off
- Analytics & Improvements settings are all off
- Lockdown Mode is off
Finally, in the DEVONthink section in iOS Settings, it looks like this:
But still the error persists.
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Yea, same outcome with or without text
Just to close the loop on this:
In the end, I had to delete and reinstall DEVONthink to Go, and once it was reinstalled and reconfigured and resynchronized, the shortcuts worked again.
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Very bizarre, but I’m glad you’ve got it working again!
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Reminds me once more of the joke, where a chemist, a physicist, and a computer scientist drive a car, which suddenly breaks down.
“I smelled something and suggest we check the tank.” says the chemist.
“No, no, I heard something, it has something to do with the engine.”, says the physicist.
“Don’t worry, my friends. I know how to solve problems.” says the computer scientist:
“We all just get out of the car - and back in again!’
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Is there any kind of resolution here? I’m having the same issue and I’d rather not reinstall DTTG as that would mean redownloading gigabytes worth of databases to my phone again.
From what I can tell the issue is specifically with the Create Item shortcut action. It’s device specific and nobody knows what causes it. It also seems to happen with the update to iOS 17.x from what I can tell. Sharing shortcuts isn’t going to surface anything as the issue isn’t in the shortcut itself, it’s in the action.
With all that being said, can we have a developer specifically look into DTTG’s create item custom intent? There is code somewhere that powers that action, and it seems to be doing something in iOS 17 that causes it to fail in certain conditions. I don’t think user troubleshooting is going to fix it, it has to be someone checking out how the intent is setup in Xcode.
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See…
Perfect, thanks! Crossing my fingers it’ll fix this issue too.