I moved from Evernote to DevonTHINK about a year ago, and believe it has the potential to be a complete Evernote replacement (I tend to think of DT as a super-powered Evernote). HOWEVER, there is one piece of the puzzle still missing: the mobile app, DT to Go. Here are two suggestions that have been on my mind:
1. Mobile Data - Limit to Text Only
I mention this as DT to Go once ate about 20GB in the background while I was out having lunch (syncing a large PDF database). I currently have mobile data turned off completely for DT to Go - but it would be really useful to be able to sync text documents (like Evernote), as they usually have a tiny file size.
Text notes are probably the biggest area to fix in DT to Go - if this feature becomes as easy to use as Evernote/OneNote (including formatting, styles, etc), I’ll be able to drop those apps completely and just have one central database in DevonTHINK (yay!).
2. Save webpage as PDF, etc
I save almost all webpages as PDFs, as it’s the easiest format to annotate for my research (and I tend to export them to MarginNote 3 for heavy annotation). This works well using the desktop web clipper, but on mobile I have to save as bookmark and download the PDF manually later on desktop.
Two possible solutions:
iOS supports export of webpages as PDFs, so could just tap into that feature.
Option to send download request to the desktop version, with all of the custom options from the desktop web clipper.
The Pro package supports downloading of file contents on demand, this option can be configured for each sync location and database/group if necessary/desired. Depending on your personal workflow synchronizing via Bonjour might also be a good option as it’s limited to local networks and of course faster.
This isn’t possible right now due to limitations of iOS. However, a smart rule (e.g. triggered after each synchronization) could perform this on the Mac.
You can send every PDF to DTTG with another DTTG icon in the share sheet.
This icon might need to be activated first in the share sheet, by clicking on the ‘…’ icon at the far right of the app icons.
Sharing data from DTTG is described in the manual on page 21 for example (featuring the icon of a familiar looking pilot by the way). IMO however, the proces of importing files from other apps to DTTG using the share sheet seems to be somewhat underrepresented. (Of course it could very well be @BLUEFROG has given it attention somewhere and I simply read over it).
To clarify this point by @cgrunenberg somewhat: this works on individual items in DTTG. So you basically tell DTTG to sync only the database, but not the files. When you’re ready to download a certain file, you select the item and download only that specific file.
This is described in the Help in DTTG and in the manual on page 25 for example.
Are you aware that in iOS Safari if you select print from the share menu, you can then convert the output to PDF by pinching outward on the print preview? That PDF can then be shared to DTTG using the share menu on the PDF preview (from your post I’m honestly unsure whether you know that but would like direct integration, or whether you are unaware of this method - so pls excuse if I’ve only stated the obvious)
That’s actually a great workaround - thank you for sharing. I might still rely on the desktop version for some sites (as the PDF clipping options are more robust), but this is good to have on hand.
