Aliases are a way to give your file another name to make it easier to find. It is extremely useful to create short names for Wiki linking in markdown (that is, using [[). Here are some examples of how I alias stuff:
- Academic papers
Name of File:
Genetics of rheumatoid arthritis contributes to biology and drug discovery. Okada, et al., 2014. Nature 506:376-380.pdf
Alias:
okada2014.
So if I am writing notes for instance and want to refer to that doc in markdown, I use [[okada2014]].
- Disease notes.
Say I have a file where I keep notes on a particular disease:
Name of File:
Primary Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis.md
Alias:
pMPGN
Again, if I wanted to create a forward link to that document in markdown, I'd use `[[pMPGN]]`.
- Project Group/Tags
This is where it can get interesting. You can alias Groups and Tags in Devonthink3. So for instance I have a project Group (think of it as a folder):
Name of Group:
2021-06 BenevolentAI Competitive Landscape Analysis
Alias: 202106BAI-4
Where the alias is my client reference. When I am typing out notes I can quickly point to my Group with the Alias.
The one thing I wished Devonthink3 did is to make autocomplete suggestions for aliases like it does file names (Obsidian does this).
HTH