Html is treated as formatted note in DTTG 4 iOS

DEVONthink To Go
1

I have bunch of html files in DEVONthink To Go 4 that are synced with the Desktop. On iPhone those html files are awkwardly treated and shown as formatted note which is obviously not what I want. They are treated correctly on both iPadOS and MacOS. Below is the information from the same file on different platforms

macOS
macOS540×276 6.91 KB

iPadOS
iPadOS460×360 25.2 KB

iOS
iOS1097×980 77.5 KB

4.0.1 on ipadOS 26.1
4.0.1 on iOS 26.1
4.1.1 on macOS 26.1

2

A formatted note is HTML. Why is what you’re seeing

? Is anything not working, or do you just want the document type to be identical in DT and DTTG?

3

And which device did you create or import the document initially?

4

I understand that formatted note is also an html file, but I don’t want it to be edited by accident on iOS as it is treated as a formatted note. My original file is html, recognized as html in both macOS and iPadOS, but it is treated as a formatted note in iOS.

5

It has been created on macOS.

6

After experimenting with the files, I noticed that when I open the previously mishandled HTML file on iOS, the iPad and macOS instances are now treated as formatted notes after a sync.

7

Similar behavior exists in iPadOS.

Summary:

  • view a true html file on Devonthink To Go (iOS/iPadOS)
    • sync (Cloudkit) or LAN)
  • open DEVONthink macOS
    • sync
    • restart
    • file is now shown as a formatted note

Strangely enough, the group has mismatching file types in different DEVONthink instances.

Example group: original 4 html files;

after viewing/syncing:

  • macOS: 3 formatted notes, 1 html
  • iPadOS/ios: 1 formatted note, 3 html
8

Here, I see the same issue with WebDAV sync. So, the sync method might not matter.

9

I guess so.

10

Yep, I’ve just stumbled on this one. I may have a simple workaround that suits me and may help others: convert your html files to webarchives. The webarchives behave the same way for me (for my use cases) and DTTG doesn’t change them into formatted notes.

My specific use case is…

I have some html files (created on Mac) with embedded js scripts for some advanced UI behaviours. (The js scripts are also stored / synced within DT / DTTG.)

The contents of the html is actually almost entirely a json object. The embedded js then does a whole bunch of rendering and interaction handling.

When the html is converted into a formatted note…

  1. I can no longer easily edit the json data within DT on Mac. (Formatted notes remove the source mode.) So I need to edit in an external editor. (Yes, I’m hardcore and edit my js without fancy IDE features! There is nothing like debugging js without a console or syntax highlighting or pesky AI bots that know everything!… ok, I admit I don’t do this too often)
  2. If I make any changes to the rendered html (e.g. an accidental key press), the rendered html becomes text in the formatted note and then I get double the output.

Additional note: I just checked and relative links to the embedded js files in the webarchives stay the same too. (I was worried they may get converted, brought into the webarchive or somehow otherwise altered.)

Additional additional note: you can still edit the source of the web archives within Mac DT.