Sorter: Format/Location dropdowns freeze when any app on the same monitor is in Full Screen mode (DT 4.2, Tahoe)

[XL108]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been dealing with a long-standing issue where the Format and Location dropdowns in the Sorter’s Web Clip tab become completely unresponsive. This has been happening across multiple macOS and DEVONthink versions and persists with the latest setup:

• DEVONthink 4.2 Pro (Cassini)
• macOS Tahoe
• MacBook Pro with 2 external monitors (30" Cinema HD as main, 20" Cinema Display in portrait as secondary)

The root cause: Full Screen mode on the Sorter’s monitor

After extensive troubleshooting, I’ve identified a reliable trigger: the problem occurs whenever any app is running in macOS Full Screen mode on the same monitor where the Sorter tab is docked. It doesn’t matter which app is in Full Screen — Safari, Calendar, OmniFocus, Claude, etc. — the Sorter appears, but the Format and Location dropdowns are frozen.

The moment I switch to a regular (non-Full Screen) Space or a Space with normal windows on that monitor, the dropdowns work again immediately — no restart of anything needed.

My setup: the Sorter tab sits on the right edge of my secondary 20" monitor, which I primarily use for Full Screen apps. This means the Sorter was broken almost all the time for me, which made the issue appear random and persistent rather than triggered by a specific condition.

This likely also explains the multi-monitor observation in this earlier thread, where a user found the issue only occurred on an external monitor:

Devonthink + Sonoma + Clip

Hello, I just upgraded to Sonoma and my issue is that when I use the Clip extension ([edit]Safari only it seems - Firefox now works) , the two dropdown “Format” and “Location” cannot be accessed (Format is stuck on “PDF” and “Location” on “Global Inbox”). I don’t see anybody having an issue with this feature. Can you please advise? Regards, Philippe

Full Screen apps on external monitors are very common, so the monitor itself probably wasn’t the cause — the Full Screen Space was.

What I tried before finding the cause:

• Restarting Safari and DEVONthink
• Disabling/re-enabling the Safari extension
• pluginkit -a to re-register the extension
• pluginkit -e use -i com.devon-technologies.think.clipper
• Disconnecting external monitors and rebooting
• None of these addressed the underlying issue

It appears the Sorter overlay can’t properly render interactive dropdown elements inside a macOS Full Screen Space.

Workaround: Move the Sorter tab to a monitor that doesn’t run Full Screen apps (i.e. to the other side of the whole setup) or switch to a non-Full Screen Space before clipping.

Hope this helps others who’ve been chasing this bug — it took me years to pin down!

Axel

[BLUEFROG]

Wlecome @XL108 and thanks for the thorough report. We will see if we can reproduce the same issue here.

[aedwards]

Thanks for the details of the issue, it appears to be caused by each display having separate Spaces. A temporary workaround whilst we investigate this further is to:

• Open MacOS Setting app
• Select Desktop & Dock
• Under the Mission Control section turn off “Displays have separate Spaces”. You will need to logout and back in for this setting to take effect. The Format & Location drop-down should now work.