Tabbed windows or real windows is not a big deal for me or a deal-breaker. Use command-` to switch between DT3 windows or make the full screen on a laptop and swipe between them.
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This cmd-` is a good one. Thanks!
I searched for more info and found out that this is not in DT but a general key shortcut for macOS “Move focus to next window” and can be customised by system preference>Keyboard>Shortcuts>Keyboard. I change the shortcut to cmd-right arrow.
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Well, it works in DT2; why does it not work in DT3. At the time of the introduction of tabbed browsing DT favourably introduced that. With 7 databases open, tabbing them in an alternative way is a hell of working with them contrary to some of you.
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Neither version 2 nor version 3 do officially support this, both actually contain absolutely no code to make this work.
IMHO: There are many work arounds out there.
One suggestion is to use BTT. The app has a custom function “Show Window Switcher for Active App” that can be mapped to any key/mouse/touchpad/touchbar gesture (I assign cmd-F3). The switcher will pop-up showing all active windows of DT. You can open and overlap multiple database windows all in the same space and jump to whichever database you need. This is even better than using tab to switch because the display of window names is not limited by the width of the tab once you have many tabs.
Obviously, I am assuming that those who need tabs for main windows are working on limited space and won’t open a combination of many main windows and document windows. Else it will be hard/impossible to spot which one in the popup is a main window and document window. For that I know of no other solution. Unless DT will consider adding some sort of identifier to the list of opened windows.
Just to avoid any misunderstanding about what I meant by tabbed windows I have attached 2 screenshots. One shows the context menu which I used to create a new window - the top item in the list. The other shows five open windows, underlined, 4 from one database, 1 from another. I don’t understand how this can be an unsupported and uncoded feature; hence my suspicion that we are talking at crossed purposes.
Whether working on one project or multi-tasking I find this arrangement extremely productive, far more than trying to have random access to any of the open windows by other means.
No misunderstanding. The second screencap shows window tabs, which as Criss noted is not officially supported and has no specific code in the application to make that happen.
How do you turn window tabs on and off?
Thanks.
You can’t. As I noted above, window tabs aren’t supported in DEVONthink 3.
I miss it dearly and it is very frustrating that standard behavior of the os which was present in the application is not continued in a new version. Use case: I just imported 300.000 files from an old archive. There are duplicates, which I want to remove. But I want to remove files from specific trees (and automation is not a good idea because duplicates are not always duplicates unfortunately). Anyway I need the tabs. I regularly had 5 tot 8 open and was quite happy with it. So I a return would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance
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Hi, I read this thread the other day, then today by chance found tabs. Perhaps you are already aware of this, and I’m not sure if it’s any help anyway.
There seems to be some tab functionality in v3, but not in the main window with sidebar. If you select multiple files then bring up the Context menu with the Option key held down, Open turns into Open in Tabs, and the selected items will open in a new tabbed window. But this is a secondary window without navigation bar, and there seems no way to add another tab to this group or move them to another tabbed window group. Basically, it is a one step option of getting a couple of selected documents into a new tabbed window, so I suspect not really what you are looking for.
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Thanks Rachel, as you say not quite the old tabs effect but a useful shortcut of which I was not aware.
It works!
All of a sudden instead of opening a new window the tabs opened in the main window and I could also add new tabs to it. I’ve just worked out why.
If you have list view open without the preview panel visible before you start, it will open selected files in a new tabbed window. If you instead open the preview panel view before Option-clicking to Open in Tabs, the documents instead open as tabs in the main window, and any subsequent tabs will also be added to this window.
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I have amended the Help to clarify this.
I do not understand it: I am in list view with no preview and opening three documents will still open three separate windows.
What do it miss?
The tab implementation in v.3 is very confusing …
Data > Open In Tabs (Cmd-Alt-O)
Depending on how you have your double-click prefs set in the Interface section of General Preferences, a usual double-click on the file will open it in a new window. If, with the Preview panel open, you Option-double-click on a new document, it will instead open it as a new tab in the Preview panel.
Hope this helps.
That is what I have set: 
And Option-Double Click will still open the documents in new windows!
It’s an alternate menu item available after pressing the Alt modifier key.