Need help - suddenly "Save PDF to Devonthink" stopped working

Strange. Was working normally until yesterday, now the PRINT dialog still lists “Save PDF to Devonthink”, with my shortcut command F12 (though the cmdF12 itself looks grayed out), and selecting it doesn’t invoke DT’s dialog. I am sure I didn’t assign CmdF12 to anything else, and yes, I went to DT Preferences to check the import settings - it still is “Select Group”

Any thoughts?

Print to DT never opened a dialog here. It just sends the PDF there. Did you check if the PDF is in DT or not?

Did you just update the operating system on the Mac?

Hi Jim, nope.

Does the issue persist after a machine reboot?

The function keys can be set to work either as special shortcut keys triggering Mission Control etc. – this is the default – or standard function (Fn) keys.

The globe/Fn key flips the behaviour while pressed, but there is also a general setting.

Maybe you somehow flipped the setting? In System Settings under Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Function Keys you find the toggle “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys”. What do you see?

PS: My shortcut here is just CMD-P. CMD + 2x P is very fast :smiley:

I happened just after a reboot, good question…

troejgaard, thanks - all others are working OK. What I have here is a trick to convince the Arc browser (which I am loving) to switch its printer dialog to the system print dialog, wait 2 secs, issue a command-P, waith another 2 seconds, then issue a cmd-F12 which is the key I had assigned to “Save to Devonthink”. So I can’t use Cmd-P again :slight_smile:

Forgot to say, the above is via Keyboard Maestro.
Function Keys are set the way it should be (enabled).
2 screens:

Function Keys showing the CmdF12 for all apps (impacting the system Print Dialog, basically) and
KM showing my macro OptF12


Also, the Arc print dialog, as invoked, and when I scroll down (well, KM does it) to select the system Print Dialog, then showing the “Save to Devonthink” with its CmdF12 - which stopped doing anything…



All other what?
Do you mean the problem is only in Arc? That the other Fn keys work as expected?

I have Cmd-P assigned to both the print dialog and “Save PDF to DEVONthink” – that was the trick :wink: A macro is of course different. And I don’t use KM or Arc, so maybe that introduces some complications I’m not aware of.

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Troejgaard, your question made me launch Safari, Edge to see what happened, and I discovered something:

Safari, invoking the Print dialog and selecting “Save PDF to Devonthink” works fine.

Surprisingly, Edge does NOT! - same issue as Arc. Edge has its own Print dialog, but (like Arc) you can swich to the systm print dialog. When you do that, and try to save to DEVONthink, it fails - look at the picture attached. Except it shows an error message (Arc did not)

Gets worse. If I try to print again from Edge, Cmd-P (or from the top menu) does not launch Edge’s print dialog. I have to quit Edge to be able to print again.

Very strange.

A system print dialog issue??

[edit] nope. I can print from Apple Notes using “Save PDF to Devonthink”.
I will try and write a short KM macro to see if it has anything to do with KM…

The KM macro (image attached) works with Apple Notes normally, invoking the Print Dialog - in fact, the sytem print dialog - then selecting the “Save PDF to Devonthink” Cmd-F12 normally.

So something is broken with both Arc and MSFT Edge, when their custom print dialogs switch to the system print dialog…

RE: double cmd+P

Oh, so simple, so genius!

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Have you tried using a previous version of Arc if the issue still occurs?

Well, considering neither are native Mac apps :thinking:

  1. Quit Arc.
  2. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app.
  3. Paste: defaults write company.thebrowser.Browser DisablePrintPreview -bool true then press Return.
  4. Type: exit, press Return, then quit Terminal.
  5. Relaunch Arc.
  6. Press Command-P to print a page. It should open to the system print dialog.

unfortunately it’s one of those apps that get updated on the fly, so there’s nothing to go back to, I think - but given that the same is happening to Edge, I am trying Jim’s suggestion

Thanks Jim, I tried that, and the system print dialog now appears instead - but selecting Devonthink from the PDF menu at bottom still results in an error both in Arc and MSFT Edge. I went to the PDF Services folder, made sure to add a fresh DT alias there, still no luck.

So, situation:

In Arc

System Print Dialog > PDF menu > Apple Notes - fails
SPD > PDF Menu > Devonthink - fails

In Apple Notes

System Print Dialog > PDF menu > Apple Notes - works fine, puts a pdf in Apple Notes
SPD > PDF Menu > Devonthink - works fine, invokes DT destination dialog

I have got the same issue for a couple of days.
If I use “Save PDF to Devonthink” from the Print Dialog Window, DT3 receives nothing.
While I could still “print” from this dialog into my Downloads folder, the PDF was not received by DT3 through the Hazel Rules I set up, even though it has been running fine for years now.
It seems that there might be something wrong with the process that is receiving PDFs within DT3, but there is also no entry within the protocol of DT3 about that.