IOS’ Background App Refresh is controlled by iOS. It determines if and when an app gets to use it and terminates the background process after 30 seconds.
So it technically can sync when it’s not the frontmost app, but it’s not a guaranteed process.
@BLUEFROG – thank you for replying.
OK.
In that case, I would like to make a feature request: As iOS apps such as Evernote and Omnifocus appear to sync continually and reliably even when in the background, they appear to have found a way to overcome or work with these iOS constraints.
My feature request is for DTTG to achieve background sync on iOS, as these other apps do. Is there some formal way to make this feature request? – thanks!
(I do understand that this feature may be a low priority for development; and/or there may be technical reasons why DTTG cannot simply emulate whatever Evernote/Omnifocus do).
As iOS apps such as Evernote and Omnifocus appear to sync continually
I think the key word here is appear. Not only are Evernote and Omnifocus syncing small amounts of data in a different way than DEVONthink To Go, there’s no evidence they’re doing anything differently in the background as you have to open them to see things have synced.
However, the request is still noted. 
@BLUEFROG – thanks for this information.
It did occur to me that something like this might be the case – my choice of the word “appear” was deliberate, for that reason
This is appreciated, as the syncing experience nevertheless feels substantially smoother with the other (eg Evernote/Omnifocus) iOS apps.
[On MacOS, I do not perceive major differences in the sync experience between the desktop versions of Evernote/Omnifocus/DT]
In the little time I could bear to use the new Evernote I gathered that EN works the same as DTTG: import and sync only happen when you actually open the app.
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This is true. 
so in essence keeping the data refreshed and in peak form is a little like exercise. Use it or lose it!
Well, I don’t know that you’ll “lose it” but there’s still going to be a little effort involved 
Why punctuated/named tags vs nested for you? Is it so you have parity when exporting to Finder?
I wasn’t thinking of export to Finder; however that’s a factor
When I assign a tag to a record, I want a single tag assignment
Not multiple tags based on nested tags
fwiw I do reflect hierarchy in my tag naming standard
For example; Budget-Groceries, Budget-HousingInternet, Budget-HousingRent
I’d love to hear more about your philosophy on this particular issue (nested vs your way of Budget-Groceries etc). I’m only mildly embarrassed to say I’ve already gathered what I can from other comments of yours on reddit and evernote forums.
Is it to save you time in filing? Because you’re able to see all child tags when you type “Budget”, for example?
I manage documents having to do with real estate. So this document is a Lease, related to Home_123, which is owned by Business_X.
When I’m looking for it in the future, I’ll be thinking “lease” for “home_123”.
So in your system that would be (type) !Lease + (~vendor) ?home_123 as separate tags? Or as one?
Confirmed
It helps in keeping track of tags, also allows the use of wildcards
Thank you for this! I am currently in the process of getting out of Evernote. I have about 3k of documents (115 notebooks) that I just imported into DEVONThink.
Thesis APP is AMAZING and SO powerful! I’ll probably never use it to its full potential, but I am definitely going to incorporate a lot of new things I discovered!
I looked into DEVONThink before but got overwhelmed. Now I am realizing that yes, it has a million features but you don’t have to use ALL of them. It’s very customizable.
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Glad to hear it and you’re correct: there’s no need to use all the features. Use what you need, knowing there are other tools available should you need them in the future.
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fully agree - you don’t have to, but you can. at your own pace, preference and priority. it’s closing in on two years since I wrote the original post and I have since discovered many helpful new processes (e.g. zettelkasten) and features (don’t even know where to start), especially here in the forums. I found the forums to be an invaluable source of information and inspiration.
overall my only regret is not having migrated earlier - what a wonderful app…
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I agree! I WISH I looked into DEVONThink MUCH sooner! I wasted SO much time on note APPs, it’s ridiculous!
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Evernote moves to Europe 
The end of an era, even if the language of the sale makes it sound entirely positive, though perhaps I just see the dark lining on the silver cloud.
Evernote radically redesigned the app a few years back, apparently using Electron to “improve” the experience, but they made it unusable for my use-case. They kept around a legacy version, but who wants to invest in an app on life support? There were many decisions over the years that left me scratching my head—on the ground level, the design was more often than not excellent, but the big picture stuff like the Electron thingy made no sense from a user perspective.
I bet there are a lot of lessons to learn from their journey. From a user perspective, one of my takeaways has been that I want to have as much control over my data as possible—I ought to be able to export it all with minimal fuss whenever I want. Evernote did this pretty well, until the Electron thing (you can only select 50 items at a time?!), but DT takes this to a whole new level. I am indexing now, so there is no exporting necessary (I could be “out” anytime, because I am not really “in” it), but even if you have everything imported into the app, you can have it all out and intact within seconds. I really appreciate how DT has remained stable over the years (no Electron-like experiments) with a consistent commitment to ensuring we have control / portability. Ironically, giving us complete freedom to leave probably makes it more likely we stay.
I suppose a lot of folks will be migrating out of Evernote, but wherever they go, I’d recommend prioritizing portability.
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Perhaps my post was inappropriate. If so, I have no problem with the moderators deleting it. I will summarize it here: In response to this thread’s topic of " Moving from evernote to devonthink in 2020", I would say that whatever you do (whether you stay or move to DT or some other solution), prioritize portability, especially in light of recent events with major services such as Twitter or Evernote.