Hello, DEVONthink community,
I am in my second wek expoloring DEVONthink and I need your help to undestand why some groups on DEVONthink do not sync to my Mac as expected, although which I add a new group to DEVONthink, it gets syced and when I create a new folder on Mac, it also gets sycned. Please see the embedded image.
It’s unclear what you’re referring to here. Not to be pedantic, but diction matters. “sync” is a very specific term and there is no sync between DEVONthink and the Finder. There are updates (or the technical terms consolidation and deconsolidation).
Where is the indexed folder in the Finder?
May I ask why you’re indexing instead of importing?
Have you read and understood the In & Out > Importing & Indexing section of the built-in Help and manual ?
Hello @BLUEFROG,
I am using WebDAV protocol on a Synology NAS. What you see on Mac Finder is actually the files/flders saved on Synology NAS.
1- The indexed folder is “1_tech_materials”
2- Indexing
3_I read it but I cannot claim that I know it in and out (yet).
The group titled “test group created on DT” was created on DEVONthink, and as soon as I created it, a folder titled “test group created on DT” appeared on Mac Finder (that is what I referrd to as sync. Pardon me if my use of the term “sync” is inaccurate). In the same way, The folder titled “test folder created on Mac” was created on Mac Finder, and as soon as I created it, a group titled “test folder created on Mac” appeared on DEVONthink.
I hope this explaantion is helpful.
To do what exactly?
Accessed via WebDAV? Or via SMB? NFS? AFS?
Probably because you indexed the surrounding folder, presumably 1_tech_materials. To be more precise:
The question remains: Why are you indexing instead of importing? Indexing is fine if you know about its potential pitfalls. Otherwise, you might well fall into one of these pits. For example, indexed items do not get synchronized to other devices, notably i*OS. Imported items, OTOH, are always synchronized (at least with reliable sync services).
To sync DEVONthink databases between 2 Mac devices.
The files themselves are accessed via SMB, however, eveytime I use DEVONthink, I connect to the files on Synology via both SMB and WebDAV.
This is correct and this is the behavior I am expecting. I do not have a problem with that.
Actually, I can see indexed items synced between DEVONthink on both my MacBook and Mac mini. But for some reasons, I do not see them on Mac Finder.
Is the database’s Trash empty?
Yes the database’ Trash is empty , and I tried deleting an item from one of the groups in DEVONthink on Mac mini, found it on the trash, checked DEVONthink’s trash of MacBook, found the same item there, deleted it, and it disappeared from the trash of DEVONthink on MacMini.
This whole process was completed without seeing this item on Mac Finder on either MacBook or Mac Mini.
Very weird.
I’m perhaps misunderstanding what you are saying, but documents in indexed groups in a macOS database absolutely are synced (assuming a reliable sync service) to iOS/iPadOS databases. And documents that are added on iOS/iPadOS to groups in the databases that are indexed on macOS are synced back to the Mac. I index 100% of my documents and it works fine.
I may, of course, be wrong, and I do not index anything. But I was thinking along the lines
/Users/me/Documents/theFolder on a MactheFolder in whatever DT database the folder is indexed to./Users/, much less /Users/me/Documents/theFolderWith stuff in a cloud service (Dropbox, iCloud Driver, whatever), I can see indexing working through sync, though.
I just tried understanding what the DT documentation says about it, but that wasn’t very successful – the “Indexing and Sync” part focuses on remote sync locations, like Dropbox.
It works, even with no cloud services and also when using Bonjour. Now what is not supported is creating indexed groups on iOS/iPadOS. They must first be indexed on macOS. Perhaps @BLUEFROG or Eric could answer the more technical aspects of your good questions.
This is one of the things I name “think different” of DT/DTTG. You have an indexed folder in your DT in your Mac. The files inside the indexed folder go to the sync database, that are available to DTTG in the DT group (on demand for example). You modify something in one of those files in DTTG, that goes back to the sync database, that is picked by DT (normally via Push notification), that puts back the file from the sync database into the indexed folder, whose new version is available outside of DT in your Mac.
Even more, if you have that indexed folder synchronised with other Mac/PC, you will get the modified DTTG file into those other computers.
The risk here is having duplicates, because the chain of events is very long, not because you modify the file in more than one place at the same time, but for the network delays in files put in cloud folders and conflicts between the cloud software (*). In case of indexed files in cloud services, As many Mac/PC you have with that folder synchronised between them, more risk to have a duplicate or, in case of PDF, a non-text PDF when the PDF has text.
(*) And that is the reason I say ALL cloud services are crap, because they use poor concurrent file stuff (like not using distributed semaphores and using local locks or local critical sections). What I don’t know is if the limitation comes from the cloud software or from the Operative System itself, but the final result is, as many computers synchronising the same folder, more stupid duplicated file conflicts you will have.
That boils down to “they are not in your database, but they are in the sync black box”. That makes sense.
Thank you, everyone, for chiming in. Upon closer examination of the screenshot I provided, I noticed that the “index icon” appeared next to the groups that had been successfully synced with the database, accordingly a correspending folder was created on my Mac mini. Conversely, I didn’t see the same “index icon” next to the groups that had not been synced with the database and therefore did not appear on my Mac mini as folders.
Since I’m still in the exploration phase of DT, I decided to delete the groups that lacked the “index icon,” created them as folders on my Mac mini, and found that they were indexed correctly and appeared as groups in DT.
Perhaps the lesson here is to always create a folder first on the Mac to be indexed by DT, rather than creating a group in DT first to be synced with the database to create a folder on the Mac.
I hope that makes sense.
Creating a folder in the Finder is not necessary. It sounds like you have something else going on. Hold the Option key and choose Help > Report bug to start a support ticket.
Done. Thank you @BLUEFROG.