On iOS, how do you get emails into DT?

DEVONthink
18

Hey @chrillek thanks, as always, for your thoughtful response. I’ll power through a few succinct responses here.

So, even if you ignore the first point, you’re still left with the second one: An unknown number of e-mail clients with unknown ability (and willingness) to let other apps get at “their” data.

Absolutely–the technical challenges are clear to me here.

The only viable (i.e. independent of platform and client) solution would be to provide an IMAP client within DT (which would not help POP3 users, but I doubt that there’s a lot of them left today). Would I want to implement that? Certainly not. Would I hold my breath waiting for the DT developers to implement that? Certainly not.

I get it–I think. What’s confusing to me is that I don’t believe (tell me if I’m wrong) that the “how” of forwarding email into a system is new or needs figuring out. Any number of apps I use support emailing into their system, including Things, Matter, and a couple others.

Is there something specifically different about DT’s infrastructure that makes implementing this harder than other platforms? Genuine question, I don’t know DT well enough (yet) to speculate.

My team builds websites and apps. (Nothing as complex as DT, and we don’t do desktop software, so I’m very deferential to the folks here who have more expertise than I). I mention that to give context to my perspective, which, based on the research of my audiences:

  • Pandemic aside, information workers are increasingly on the go, working from mobile, with a need to get info into a system from their phones.
  • There is a decreasing dependence on email as a workspace, and a greater need to get the important info out of that particular inbox hellscape.
  • There is increased expectation that information managers, such as DT, have strong parity in terms of features between desktop and tablet.
  • A material amount of software (that my team uses) us getting better to use on iPads than laptops. (Adobe is the main actor there, which weakens my argument a bit, but I’m seeing the same trends in other software.)

So yeah, by no means would I expect DT to try to build a system that accommodates the plethora of (often not great) email software and browser-based clients (ugh)–but maybe that clarifies why I’m asking the question.

I’m not sure about your terminology. Is “folder” a folder in the Finder or do you mean a group in DT? Is “Inbox” the inbox in your e-mail client or the Inbox in DT? What does “it’s picked up” mean – picked up how, by whom or what, when?

Yeah, fair, I wasn’t very specific. Here’s what I’m thinking:

  • Mail.app has a folder, something called “Send to DevonTHINK.”
  • If I’m on my phone, I drop an important email in there (to your point, I don’t need DT indexing the insanity of everything in my inbox).
  • DT indexes the “Send to DevonTHINK” folder, so when I manually drop an email in there, that’s what gets “picked up” by DT and moved to the DT inbox whenever it can run that rule.
  • When I do my daily reviews in Things and DT, I move that email that is in DT’s inbox to the proper DT group.

Hopefully that clarifies. Thanks again for all your help.

-Jefferson

19

From “Things”, I gather that you might be referring to their “Mail to Things” setting.
Which works because there’s “Things cloud”: Some kind of not very well detailed service sitting somewhere in “the Cloud” doing something magical (and hopefully respecting your privacy). BTW:

With Things Cloud, all your network traffic is securely encrypted using the latest SSL technology, ensuring that everything you do is for your eyes only.

(quoted from their website) That means they do transport encryption. Not a single word on data at rest, i.e. in their cloud. Not a single word on where the data is located (US? Europe? China?). Nothing on the cloud provider (Google? AWS? Azure? Apple?). Hopefully, not the latter. This lack of detail would make me want to avoid their service.

Yes: DT does not offer a cloud service. Which I, for one, do not regret. But I remember a discussion on that here in the last several months, so you might also want to search in the forum (which could prove a bit difficult given the ubiquity of possible search terms).

Given that the OS for desktop and mobile are vastly different (and probably will remain so for some time), not everything possible on one platform can be implemented on the other (there is no “swipe up” to terminate an app on the desktop, for example). Then there’s the question of real estate and limited resources – you do not have swap space on a mobile device as you do on a desktop. Heck, you don’t even have a real file system in iOS.

Catering to unrealistic expectations is pointless, in my mind.

Well, that again excludes all other mail clients. It also requires Mail to sync its state and content across devices. Unless you mean an IMAP folder (of which you’d need one per account). Which again leads back to my earlier point: DT would need a kind of IMAP client to work across platforms and around clients.

What you really (seem to) want is
a cloud service that integrates with DT and DTTG in that it magically keeps your data Somewhere™ and offers a (secure!) API to talk with it, including sending e-mails (or whatever documents) to these services and then do Something™ with them.

Something like “iDEVONthink.” While I see your point: That’s not where DEVONtechnology seems to be coming from. The product has been placed as a single-user, two-machine app (apart from the server, that is). It was not conceived (apart from the server, again) to be running 24/7 and waiting for requests to arrive.

Even if there were an iDT software, it would probably come with a very different price tag, rather with a subscription model: ingress/outgress as well as data at rest have to be paid for by Someone™.

In my mind, it would be a lot easier for everybody if Apple implemented a “share” menu in their Mail program. Well, one can dream.

3 Likes
20

Yup! You get me.

Notebooks (https://www.notebooksapp.com/) is a good example of that idea. I used Notebooks for a week or so, before starting to run into “I wish I could…” mostly related to file management. In fact, this is where I clarified what I needed from an information manager, and realized DT could do most, if not all, of the things I felt Notebooks was missing.

So yeah, do I wish there was an iDevonTHINK product? For sure. But I get what you’re saying–that’s not what DT is and it does not appear to be evolving that way. Turns out, the capabilities of DT outweigh my desire for a cloud-first service. I was surprised, too.

Even if there were an iDT software, it would probably come with a very different price tag, rather with a subscription model: ingress/outgress as well as data at rest have to be paid for by Someone™.

Agreed. The thing is, and I don’t say this often because it’s a surprisingly hot topic, I don’t mind the subscription model. I get it; software is moving (has moved) towards a cost model that reflects the expenses of the infrastructure behind it. It’s not my favorite thing about the software world, but I understand the logic.

Yes: DT does not offer a cloud service . Which I, for one, do not regret. But I remember a discussion on that here in the last several months, so you might also want to search in the forum (which could prove a bit difficult given the ubiquity of possible search terms).

I get it now–a lot of things a making much more sense in the “not a could service” context. Not the least of which is why my description of what I’m trying to do with Mail.app is probably still not clear. Let me experiment a little see if I can make it work and I’ll add my experience, positive or negative, to the forums.

Catering to unrealistic expectations is pointless, in my mind.

One clarifying point here, that admittedly does advocate for my POV–I said “strong” parity, not one-hundred-percent. The latter is wildly unrealistic for sure. Either way, yes, MacOS and iOS are fundamentally different and will, for quite a long time to come (I hope), require different experiences.

Generally, re: security: fair points all around. I guess my justification for continuing to use cloud services is that I have always been careful about the entry point–I have always been cognizant of what I’m putting into the cloud, so in theory, most of it should be pretty boring. But everyone has different tolerances and approaches.

In any case, sincere thanks for engaging in the details here. Understanding how DT works is personally interesting and certainly helps me figure out how to make it work better for my use case. I’ll add whatever I learn (that is useful) to the forums over the coming weeks.

21

what if you rolled your own? send the email to an account that is received on your DEVONthink machine. Write some code to save the email and any attachments to the DEVONthink global inbox. then DEVONthink rules and AI takes over.

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22

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, I just don’t know what direction is best yet.

Seems easy enough to set up a shortcut or Applescript to shift an email to where DT can see it. Of course, that would only run when my main machine is running, which might be ok.

But the really cool thing would be if I can use the old MBA I have and have something running all the time.

I havnen’t really looked at the server version, but I suspect it’s way overpowered for this exercise.

There’s a number of directions to go and the trick is just what is the simplest, most elegant one that minimizes failure points.

And if one of the devs on my team will help me out. :slight_smile:

23

Edit: Accidentally replied to the wrong post. My real reply went here: Syncing on iOS devices - #13 by Jmstovall. Apologies!

24

I use a Mac Mini running all the time; with a script to move selected emails to DT

To identify the emails, I move them to Apple Mail folder Devonthink

25

Not going to add a ton of value to this thread with this but - holy crap I had no idea this (the UX interaction on iPhone, the support in DTTG) was a thing and it’s amazing.

Like some of the others I’ve tried all the email apps and integrations and little did I know it just works natively.

Why you gotta love this forum!

3 Likes
26

Here is a quick screencast of it being done on the iPhone as noted by @eboehnisch…

  1. I tap and hold, then slightly drag the email.
  2. While still holding it, I swipe up lightly with my thumb to open the application switcher.
  3. Then I switch to DEVONthink To Go and drop the file in when I see the green addition cursor.
2 Likes
27

thanks. that is great and looks simple. Great leaning method. BUT requires an iOS device that allows it to work. No matter what I try cannot do this on an iPhone7 with up to date iOS.

Requires Split Screen, I believe. Correct?

28

No split screen was involved. Just the application switcher.

29

Ok. Try as I might, can’t seem to make it happen on my iPhone7. I acknowledge it’s old. But it works (but for this). No matter. I do the “hard” stuff on the Mac anyway! :wink:

30

As do I :slight_smile:

31

I was unable to imitate this process on the Apple Mail app on my iPhone 15 (with iOS 17.2.1). The email opens with a long press instead of lifting. Any advice? Is this action still possible in the newer iOS?

32

This could be an iOS hiccup. It happens in other apps too. Restarting the device should do the trick.

33

Indeed, Preside on mobile devices is the only app I have found which will export directly to DT.

The imported DT doc is plain text but what is interesting is that it contains a backlink to both the Preside and Mail.app email item. Really useful should the app go under.

It is not what one would call a pretty app - more down the other end of the pretty spectrum actually. But rock-solid. Takes a little while to set up but then so does MailMate.

34

Interesting. Perhaps that will be useful to some people on here.

35

Does Protonmail work with DEVONthink? Thank you

36

No, there is no specific support for Protonmail. It appears to have something they’re calling a bridge for Apple Mail, so it’s appears it’s technically possible to use a Protonmail account in Apple Mail, but that’s no different than using a Gmail account in Apple Mail.

1 Like
37

As far as I know Apple Mail doesn’t support printing from the app, but most other mail clients do. So most of the time I simply print to DevonThink / DTTG. No client specific format, but interchangeable pdf format.