I’m seeing an inconsistent issue when pasting screenshots into RTF notes in DEVONthink.
As expected, the note converts to RTFD on image paste. However, sometimes the pasted image ends up with a large amount of white space above it, pushing it down in the note. Other times, the image inserts cleanly with no extra space.
A few things I’ve confirmed:
__________________
All screenshots are taken using CleanShot X and are visually identical (no white border in the source).
The issue happens only in DEVONthink. Pasting into other apps (Pages, Word, etc.) shows no extra white space.
All images get the arrow icon in the top-right for annotation/markdown — which is fine and expected — but this isn’t what’s causing the padding.
The problem occurs regardless of how I paste (⌘V, drag-and-drop, or right-click > Paste).
Using Preview to crop, export, or annotate before pasting doesn’t reliably prevent the issue.
This happens with the first image pasted into a note just as often as with later ones, so it doesn’t appear tied to the RTF → RTFD conversion moment.
_________________________
It seems like DEVONthink is sometimes wrapping the image with excess vertical padding, but I can’t find a consistent trigger. Has anyone else encountered this? Any known workaround to avoid the white space?
CleanshotX does something very specific when copying to the clipboard. Take a screen capture with the built-in macOS tool, e.g., Shift-Control-Command-3 and paste it into an RTFD document. How does it behave?
Secondly, what are the Settings > Editing > Format > Line Height Multiple or Line Spacing set to?
PS: That’s DEVONthink 3.x, which is in maintenance and will be retired at some point. Version 4 is it active focus of development and we recommend upgrading sooner rather than later.
Document line spacing does not seem to affect behavior of pasted in image.
What is odd is that sometimes CleanshotX screenshots paste in with no excess space above and part of image and other times the screenshot pastes in “cleanly” with no excess space above…
Really baffled since can’t think of any correlating factors on either the CleanshotX or Devonthink side that would cause different behavior for how Devonthink treats some screenshots vs others…
I find that this gap is caused by the line spacing setting. First, have the Format Bar visible: Format menu > Show Format Bar. Select the image with the cursor (or click the cursor right next to it). Then set the line height to 1.0. If you want a gap above and below, increase Paragraph Spacing Before and After.
