Item in Favorites keeps reappearing

DEVONthink
1

Hi,

I’ve searched the forum but haven’t found a solution to this issue yet.

I marked a document from a database as a Favorite, and it correctly appeared in the Favorites section of the sidebar. Later, I removed it by right-clicking and selecting Remove from Favorites.

However, the document keeps reappearing in the Favorites list every time I restart DEVONthink. It seems impossible to permanently remove it.

I’m running DEVONthink 4.1.1 on macOS Sequoia 15.7.1 .

Can't Remove Favourites (macOS)
2

Can you post a screencast of the behavior - showing the favorited item, removing it, then Favorites after relaunching? If you want this to be private, open a support ticket and attach it.

3

Check the permissions and ownership of the file ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink/Favorites.plist in the Finder. Do you have read/write access?

4

Yes, just checked and I have RW permissions on this file

5

Like this ?

6

Perfect!
That appears to be a document in a closed database. Double-click it to open its database then try removing the favorite and relaunching DEVONthink. Does the misbehavior persist?

7

Yes, it’s an “highlander” :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

edited (screencast removed)

8

Do you have a Dragonhead Katana you could use? :wink: :stuck_out_tongue:

Just out of curiosity… do the same thing but leave the database open when you quit DEVONthink. Does it still reappear on relaunch ?

9

Yes (I’m not posting the screencast this time but I can confirm it’s the same behaviour)

10

Thank you. That’s useful information. The effort (and light-hearted humor) is appreciated.

1 Like
11

It seems the issue is related to that specific document.

To troubleshoot, I tried adding a few other documents from the same database — and also from another database — to Favorites.

Then, one by one, I:

  1. Removed each item from Favorites,
  2. Closed and relaunched DEVONthink after each removal.

All other removed Favorites stay removed after restarting the app — except for that one :face_with_monocle:

1 Like
Can't Remove Favourites (macOS)
12

Any chance to get rid of this now un-favourited favourite, @BLUEFROG ?

I even deleted the document in question and emptied the trash, but this “once favourite” keeps reappearing and refuses to :coffin: …

At this point, should I open a support ticket?

13

Yes, especially as we have no other such reports.

14

I’m leaving this message here as it may be useful for future readers (e.g @avatar, who apparently was having a similar issue, as reported here) - at least until the devs implement a permanent fix (if they decide to do so).

With the assistance of the support team, we identified the issue.

Before DT4, I had DT3 installed. When I deleted DT3, its Application Support folder was not deleted. As a result, the following behavior occurred:

  • As long as I had at least one favorite in DT4, the Favorites section worked as expected. Adding/removing favorites updated Favorites.plist located in DT4’s Application Support folder: ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink/Favorites.plist
  • However, when I removed the last favorite, DT4 deleted the Favorites.plist.
  • After closing and reopening DT4, the app apparently picked up the DT3 Favorites.plist (still present from the old installation), which in my case contained only one item — the “incriminated” document :grimacing: — so it kept reappearing as a favorite.

So, for me deleting the DT3 folder in Application Support solved the issue

6 Likes
15

That seems to solve the issue. Very helpful Thanks. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
16

Just a quick note that I had the same issue, and this worked for me too. Many thanks for putting this up.

3 Likes