Learning how to use Devonthink

Ah, thanks! It’s actually been working fine for me on Sonoma, so is still worth installing. Like you, I’m not sure I need this functionality enough to go from £0.00 to £29.99 for it; perhaps if/when it breaks I’ll rethink…

It works for me on Sonoma as well.

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What I do is to create my own cheat sheets using macOS’s forgotten app: Stickies.

Here is my set up:

  • I tile stickies across the whole screen, each one for a different app where I want to remember keyboard shortcuts or terminal command with flags (especially that counterintuitive git).

  • I use a different colour for each app and strategically place the tiles (for example the ones I use most often are at the top row. Top left is Devonthink :slight_smile: and all my Unix stuff is on the rightmost sector starting at the bottom right) - after some time, the eye automatically finds the right tile in the right “sector” of the screen quickly.

Looks like this on my 17" Apple Thunderbolt Display:

  • As I come across new shortcuts that I want to remember, I add them (not randomly as you can see – the shortcut entries are organised in logical groups) and unlike stock cheatsheets, I do not waste space with things I already know.

  • I remove an item once it has become muscle memory.

How I use it

  1. Launch Stickies and all the tiles will pop up in front of any other app (as seen above).

  2. Look up the shortcut I know I noted down some time ago.

  3. Press CMD-H to hide the stickies app.

  4. Go about my business.

  5. When I want to look up shortcuts again either: CMD-TAB to the stickies app which will unhide it or CMD-SPACE and start searching for the app.

(Or of course, you could quit Stickies after each use and relaunch again. This is quite viable on those blazing M1, M2 & M3 Macs).

HTH.

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Haha, a fellow vim user! :slight_smile:
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks!

I have one Stickies note that stays on screen permanently with shortcuts I need that I always forget. I think the list is less than 10 shortcuts currently, and it’s stuff I really shouldn’t go without but don’t remember (e.g. my shortcut for creating a link to an email).

For things I only use occasionally or on the whole mostly remember, I have a folder in Apple Notes with them listed by app. It’s quicker to look up my own note, which only has shortcuts I don’t remember that I know I use, than look up on the web or in a manual which has loads of shortcuts I will never use.

When I read about an interesting shortcut, I can add it to my list and give it a go.

I didn’t have Cheatsheet installed when I upgraded to Sonoma so I’ve lost it (I’d rebooted my MBP earlier in the summer and hadn’t re-installed everything). I do find it somewhat annoying though that iPadOS basically has this function natively (if you hold down cmd a list of options appears), whilst MacOS doesn’t. It would be great if Mac did this!

Should you need it, now or in the future, you can still download the CheatSheet installer from Softonic for now.

If you have to look up a shortcut, is it really a shortcut?

Well, that’s the discussion for the Christmas table sorted :joy:

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I’ve always appreciated the apps that list the keyboard shortcuts beside every menu option.
In any training I’ve ever imparted to new editors, a basic one is to use the menu function to do the thing you need to do and when you keep going to the same menu item, note the shortcut, then wean yourself off the menu. That way you memorize the repeated use ones and stay with the menu function for occasional functions. The apps that don’t list all the shortcuts in the menu, a cheat sheet is the next best thing.

This is borne from regular professional use of applications that have had, since the 90s, a “command palette” with multiple tabs of mappable buttons and functions and places to put those buttons in multiple windows based on local task preference.
People have made a lot of money over the years attempting to solve the problem of getting editors faster with shortcuts through coloured keyboards, paper cutouts and overlays over keyboards, laminated cards that fit under keyboards, external devices, and separate apps.

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@Luminary99_0 Your Stickies solution is really very ingenious. :clap: :grinning:

Perhaps even better is what BetterTouchTool can show: a highly customizable cheat sheet that triggers directly when clicked. But as already mentioned, why have a shortcut if you don’t know it? :wink:

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Cheatsheets cover the gap between learning of the existence of a shortcut and committing it to memory, or, to put it in in a rhyme:
(With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan)
It really is quite logical
and only slightly metaphorical
To get faster at your software, of varieties categorical
The use of shortcut cheat sheets is really pedagogical.

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ok :slightly_smiling_face: