I’m trying to find an item with a specific URL using url:https://devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink but it doesn’t return any results. I can find items with url:devontechnologies but that’s not specific enough. Is a specific URL search supposed to work on DTTG?
- Why isn’t it specific enough?
- Where is it in the content?
I’m looking for a specific URL for a bookmark and the phrase devonthink in this example matches multiple URLs / bookmarks. My use case is I’m using this in an iOS Shortcut that updates an item (bookmark) if it already exists or creates a new item if it doesn’t exist.
I’m not sure if I understand? The URL is in the metadata - as it is a bookmark, the URL is not anywhere in the content.
I’m still struggling trying to get this to work: finding an item with a specific URL. If I’m understanding correctly the URL field is only search for words; not a full URL. I think a workaround then would be to cut the URL into pieces according to DTTG:
So searching for https://www.devontechnologies.com/blog/20230530-import-email-copies would become a search phrase of `url:www url:devontechnologies url:com url:blog url:20230530 url:import url:email url:copies’. It’s tedious (although can be scripted) - but this seems to be the only workaround?
EDIT: I’ve been trying this out but another weird quirk pops up. As an example with this bookmark:
https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/how-llms-work-explained-without-math Transformed into this query:
url:blog url:miguelgrinberg url:com url:post url:how url:llms url:work url:explained url:without url:math
I see the result I want if I manually enter the query in the search box in DTTG - yay! But as soon as I hit enter there are 0 results…?
Why are you trying to find such a specific URL? Are you trying to locate bookmarks?
Yes - I’m trying to find a DT (bookmark) record associated with that URL so I can e.g. add appropriate tags and annotations.
What kind of annotations, like an annotation file?
Yes, amongst others. So I save a bookmark created once and some time later I might want to add a piece of information (e.g. a selection of text) or a tag to that bookmark or to an annotation of that bookmark. Because annotations are not accessible through Shortcuts on iOS I currently store the annotation in a comment section first (and create a separate annotation via DT on Mac)
I’m curious why you’re not clipping to a more static format, e.g., PDF, and annotating that document.
Because I process my annotations (highlights, notes) through Markdown files - and I don’t annotate my PDF files (which I create from all bookmarks) so I can easily share them without any personalized markup.
As an addendum: I’m using the URL because it’s the piece of information I have when clipping that is able to tell me if I have clipped this website before. For that part it doesn’t matter if I clip to PDF, bookmark or any other format - the URL is the identifier.
There are ofcourse a myriad of ways to do things; but for some of them identifying a record based on a piece of metadata (in this case: a URL) should be possible. I fully understand that DTTG and DT are built on different platforms and offer different functionality. But as far as I could see searching for a URL (even if it’s only via the workaround I showed) should be (somewhat) possible, no?
Here’s what I don’t fully understand:
- How / if URLs are indexed as part of the metadata so they can be searched in DTTG?
- Why searching with the workaround method shows the result before pressing Enter, but doesn’t show any results after pressing Enter (and also not in the Shortcuts results).
it’s the piece of information I have when clipping that is able to tell me if I have clipped this website before.
How so, e.g, through some shortcut?
I fully understand that DTTG and DT are built on different platforms and offer different functionality. But as far as I could see searching for a URL (even if it’s only via the workaround I showed) should be (somewhat) possible, no?
Possible? Not out of the box. Your first sentence is the clue. The underlying search technologies aren’t the same in DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go so they don’t automatically support the same syntax.
- Why searching with the workaround method shows the result before pressing Enter, but doesn’t show any results afterpressing Enter (and also not in the Shortcuts results).
Do you have the URL entered in the content of the documents? I’d hazard a guess you do.
and I don’t annotate my PDF files (which I create from all bookmarks) so I can easily share them without any personalized markup.
I don’t know your specific use case, but in the Data menu…
Yes indeed (the URL is in the comment section where my annotation file ‘lives’ for lack of Annotation UUID support yet in DTTG). But I’m still wondering why it is logical that it does not yield any results when pressing Enter? I can’t think of a logical reason - wouldn’t any results from the ‘simple’ search also need to be included in the ‘full’ search - or am I overlooking something?
Pressing Return invokes a full-text search so results before Return wouldn’t necessarily be present after.
In the current state of things, you can’t search for a full URL. Also, you should ignore puncutation.
For this URL, https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/how-llms-work-explained-without-math search for url:miguelgrinberg llms without math.
Did that work as expected?
Thanks - I’m still a bit weirded out by the inner workings of search on DTTG 
I’ve found that in my case searching for ~https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/how-llms-work-explained-without-math also does the trick interestingly enough.
Unrelated but that’s a well-written, insightful article. Thanks for sharing!
1 Like