I was wondering if there’s any way to change the name of the alias in the Finder’s sidebar that points to the global inbox. I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, which replaces the Inbox’s custom folder sidebar icon with a generic one. I use a lot of “inboxes” and just wanted something to distinguish this particular Inbox folder as DT’s. Changing the name of the actual Inbox file (in ~/Library…) doesn’t work (DT just creates a new Inbox when launched). Making an alias to that Inbox folder, renaming it, and then dragging that to the sidebar doesn’t work either: it just assumes the name of it’s target, Inbox!
I liked the custom icon before, but with the generic one, I’d like that name to be “DEVONthink” or “DT Inbox” or whetever. Just something besides a generic “Inbox” with a generic folder icon.
As you’ve noticed, changing the name doesn’t fool DEVONthink – it just creates a new Inbox. Over here, I use the DEVONthink folder action “Import to Selected Group” attached to a folder with a unique name, that I add to the Finder sidebar. There are a variety of folder actions that can be used to create custom inboxes or emulate the standard Inbox.
Thanks for the help! This is the first time I’ve ever tinkered with folder actions, but I think I’ve figured it out. At this stage I just want a folder that emulates the standard Inbox. I created a new folder with a name I like and configured it with the “Import & Delete” folder action. Would that be the closest I could get to the regular Inbox? I tested it and it seems to work, although it’s not as fast as the regular Inbox when importing items that have been dropped in the folder while DT wasn’t open. Also, it throws those items in the Trash, which is fine, although I liked the way the standard Inbox just seemed to make them vanish.
Again, thanks for the tip, and if you can suggest any better way of making my new folder mimic the old Inbox, please do. Thanks.
The DEVONthink Inbox is a real database and so will work exactly like other databases – with the added feature of the external collector bin in Finder’s sidebar. Folder actions on the other hand are less rich, as you’ve noticed. Folder actions are slower because they depend on the OS X file system to monitor the folder and periodically trigger the import to DEVONthink – which introduces a sometimes noticeable delay.