List of feature requests for iOS (and future macOS) Shortcut actions

[Solar-Glare]

Now that Apple has announced the incorporation of Shortcuts in macOS, I wouldn’t be surprised the popularity of Shortcuts will grow in the coming years. If you’re interested in the background of their development choices, episode 592 of this podcast features one of Apple’s employees who further explains Shortcuts for macOS at approximately 39 minutes into the show. (And don’t worry: Applescript will still be supported in macOS as is explained at 49 minutes).

Luckily for the DTTG users, version 3 brought Shortcuts integration. The actions provided are already great and can save you considerable time, but of course in time you’ll find yourself in a situation where the existing shortcuts or their options don’t fit your need. I’ve therefore previously gathered some suggestions made by me and others and summarized them for @eboehnisch and @aedwards.

My question to all other users would be to extend this list, so we can create a ‘living’ document that can serve as a source of inspiration for future development.

Of course it’s up to the DT staff to prioritize and decide whether or not a feature can and will be added. And I imagine some request undoubtedly will require much more development time and effort than others for example. (And DTTG development is not only about Shortcuts integration of course )

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

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DTTG suggestions (in random order):

1 Update sheet records:
Is it possible to update a sheet record in DTTG with Shortcuts?

2 Disable confirmation dialog
Confirmation dialog using DTTG Shortcuts actions

3 Tag using Shortcuts
Tagging in Shortcuts

4 Disable default ‘Show while running’
Request: can the “Show while running” button be set to disabled by default in DTTG Shortcuts actions?

5 Add the UUID when sharing to Shortcuts
No UUID passed on to Shortcuts?

6 Add ‘convert to searchable PDF’ (OCR) as shortcut action
iOS: PDF Photos in DTTG instead of JPG

7 Create or update records of rich text documents
create or update records of rich text documents

[aedwards]

Thanks for your suggestions.

[Solar-Glare]

I almost forgot why I started this thread, but here’s another suggestion:

Add ‘convert to searchable PDF’ (OCR) as shortcut action

iOS: PDF Photos in DTTG instead of JPG

@rmschne Many thanks, I didnt realize that DTTG already has a convert feature to PDFs. Scanner Pro is in fact a good choice for other scans besides DTTG. @BLUEFROG Many thanks fro your input. You’re right, the converting I didnt realize, it works fine, but not with older books I tried. @Solar-Glare A real cool way solving this via shortcuts.

[Solar-Glare]

create or update records of rich text documents

Can we manipulate rich text records with iOS shortcut?

Based on my experience, the DTTG shortcut actions for now can only create or update records of plaintext documents. Am I missing anything here? I really want to create documents with both images and formatted texts in DTTG with shortcut.

[P12]

A big +1 to this request. The OCR feature in DTtg is very powerful but not conveniently accessed from within an automated workflow.

A ‘Convert Item’ function, including convert to searchable PDF, here would be a great addition:

[BLUEFROG]

Welcome @P12

Thanks for your vote on this. No promise on the when but we are considering this kind of Shortcut action.

[Igor_B]

Move item or Destination — instead of x-devonthink://x-callback-url/update?uuid=&destination=

As a separate action, or within this action:

[Igor_B]

Possibility to use variables for Tags in Create and Update actions.

Now possible to use only predefined Tags.

[BLUEFROG]

Just as tags are a list in DEVONthink, tags can be created by using a list in DEVONthink To Go.

[Solar-Glare]

Jim, any way for me to update the first post in this thread again? I would like to curate the list of suggestions (if the action isn’t possible yet and thus can be considered a request).

It seems Discourse locks me out of editing after a certain couple of weeks (which makes sense for most threads)

[BLUEFROG]

I’ll see what I can do.

[Solar-Glare]

I’ve added your request to get the current item to this list @Igor_B.

(I’m afraid I can no longer edit the original post at the top, unless @BLUEFROG finds a way to reset the edit rights of that post in Discourse somehow).

Shortcuts — Proposal — Get currently selected item

We use the following construction [01] Can you, dear developers, add an option to Get DEVONthink item with action — Currently selected? [02] And if selected is nothing, not to show error message, but return something like NULL. It would be good also to detect a type of selected record — group, file or even NULL.

[Igor_B]

@Solar-Glare, I support your idea, and wish @BLUEFROG made something for the curating.

Personally me think about list of shortcust. I have a collection of working shortcuts for DTTG, and would like to share.

[Solar-Glare]

@Igor_B

made something for the curating.

I’m not sure whether it is possible for @BLUEFROG to do that. I’ve searched on the Discourse forum that unsurprisingly uses Discourse as well and appropriately is called Metadiscourse

I found several discussions regarding the possibility for users to edit older posts.

Discourse Meta

One mentioned suggestion was the use of a wiki, another was setting the time-out to an unlimited re-editing time (which obviously has it’s drawbacks as well).

[Igor_B]

Action “Imprint”.

With custom metadata

Imprint + custom metadata is the only difference between DEVONthink Pro and DTTG for my work.

[Igor_B]

“Update Content” action — add option “Insert into N line”, where “N” is line number.

“N” can be a variable.

For instance, we have registrys (lists) of documents. We add new records for new docs on top of a table.

With the option, a user would be able to add new text (lines) to either top of file, or any line of text, or end of text.

[Igor_B]

“Get the items in the group” action

Add options

• Files only
• Groups only
• Exclude hidden items
• Sort by …

[pfarrelle]

It’s been a long time since this was written, but I just created and ran this shortcut on my iPhone running iOS 26.5 and it creates a new document: “Tagged” with a single tag: two three instead of two tags: two and three which I am sure is what Jim @BLUEFROG intended.

I came back here after having similar problems with the “update meta action” Passing tags to new “update item metadata” shortcuts action - DEVONthink To Go - DEVONtechnologies Community, where Jim proposed a looping strategy to update one tag at a time.

Then @P12 pointed to this thread as a solution to pass a list, so I was excited, but it doesn’t work.

I am still hoping for a simple interface to pass in a list of tags to the DEVONthink shortcut actions.

[pfarrelle]

Well, I guess things have changed in the interface and what didn’t work before now does, and maybe vice versa.

When trying to pass multiple tags as a parameter to the DEVONthink action to either:

1. create an item or
2. update the metadata of an item

what I am seeing now is that:

A. passing a shortcut list type variable

=> results in a space separated single tag, e.g:

`one two three`

B. Passing a comma separated string

e.g: "one,two,three" then, that

=> results in three tags:

`one` `two` and `three` as desired 

This was definitely not the case at some point in the past.

Can @BLUEFROG or @eboehnisch please confirm.

Thanks!

[eboehnisch]

Apple tends to change things here underneath your feed, it’s a bit like quicksand. @BLUEFROG, please test and if confirmed, open an issue for it.