Objective: be able to use Alfred to search both DEVONthink and Obsidian in the same search. Perhaps even to search directly in DEVONthink and be able to pull results from both programs.
I use Alfred rather extensively. By doing this, I could directly search both DEVONthink and obsidian from Alfred I think.
It might even let me search within DEVONthink across my devices to include my obsidian vault. That I don’t know yet is I can’t quite get my head around all this.
For those of you far more advanced than me (and that would likely be most people here)…
Is this possible? Advisable?
Any help, pointing to the right direction or flat out advice would be more than welcome.
Thanks
I seem to remember previous threads on this topic here. Did you read those?
Hmmm I sure didn’t but I will search now. I actually thought this was so unique that people would not have asked about it. That was silly on my part. I will search and see what I find. Thank you.
I was a heavy Obsidian user about 2021-late 2024, then I quit Obsidian and went to DEVONthink instead.
I left my Obsidian vault where it was an indexed it to DEVONthink. I only consult it occasionally, and do not add to it.
This works fine. I have not discovered any problems.
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One of the main points of using plain text is the portability—avoiding lock-in and having the ability to access & edit the same files with different applications.
My impression is that indexing plain text files in DEVONthink is pretty common. And if you index something, it is naturally included in your searches.
Obsidian has something of a following, so there are many threads in this forum (and elsewhere) about combining them.
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@NorthStar
Obsidian indexes without fault via DT4.
I’ve been using a DT indexing workflow for close to 20 years, and specifically with Obsidian as my main plain text repository since 2020. And have encountered no major issues.
There are a number of considerations one needs to be aware of, when following an indexing vs importing workflow in DT. And this is equally pertinent to plain text assets and PDF’s. My advice would be to first read the “In & Out” section of the excellent in-app documentation. DEVONthink has some of the best documentation I’ve read for any macOS application, and the in-app version of the documentation is more context driven than ploughing through the PDF documentation.
If you still have questions after first reading this section of the documentation, post other, more specific questions at that point.
I’d also suggest you create a duplicate of your Obsidian data, so that you can freely experiment using DT alongside Obsidian before risking your core data. The main Obsidian consideration will be how your tags roundtrip error free between DT and Obsidian. There’s no one way here, as it really comes down to how you use tags within Obsidian.
DT is flexible in the sense that it can be configured to use Obsidian style [[]] wiki links, and Obsidian style transclusion/embedding via ![[]] syntax.
Finally, much as the range of configuration options via the DT global ⌘ & , Settings can be overwhelming; going through these whilst using the DT in-app documentation is an incredibly valuable exercise as it uncovers most of the main benefits of using DT, whilst explaining exactly how these global options finely tune one’s DT workflow.
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On the contrary – there is even a plug-in for Obsidian that facilitates interconnection with DEVONthink:
Personally speaking. I’d avoid that plugin as it’s not been updated in 4 years (Obsidian is only in its 5th year). And it’s only been installed a total of 8,778 times. Which is hardly a glowing endorsement when it comes to Obsidian community plugins.
Because we’re dealing with plain text here, one only needs to index folders of plain text files in DT to take advantage of DT’s classic statistical Ai features. Even if your Obsidian vault has rich media assets, the beauty of an indexing workflow, is that the file paths pointing to image, video and/or audio assets remain the same.
One of the core ways I use DT with Obsidian, is to create new backlinks to notes. DT is great at bringing to the surface “Outlier” notes that don’t on the surface directly relate to each other. However, they often connect to each other conceptually.
Much as the DT Markdown editing features have improved in recent years, I use a separate specialist app for editing Markdown notes whilst using DT. My preference is to use Typora. Another common choice is iA Writer.. No matter whether you’re using DT, iA Writer or Typora to edit notes in DT, the beauty of the indexing workflow is that you’re making changes to the original Obsidian note, so when you return to your Obsidian vault, any post DT amendments, are reflected real-time.
Well, it works fine with DEVONthink 4 beta and the latest version of Obsidian, and the accompanying AppleScript also works fine with the latest version of Obsidian and DEVONthink 4 beta. So perhaps it hasn’t been updated because it doesn’t need to be updated.
Ryan Murphy knows more about information systems than most of us ever will because that is his specialist area of academic study. But each to their own!
Cheers.
It doesn’t matter. As a general recommendation, becoming reliant on a third party add-on written in the earliest days of Obsidian, for DEVONthink which it’self is only on the second beta of v4 is something to be aware of.
I didn’t pass comment on whether the plugin works or otherwise. But I do question whether an add-on is required to use DT and Obsidian in tandem when using an indexing workflow. This process is child’s play as long as one has gone through the “In & Out” section of the DT documentation.
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I have my main Obsidian vault indexed in DT for similar use cases. The Obsidian vault is the iCloud folder of iA Writer. I have run this setup in both DT3 and DT4 without outstanding issues.
If your Obsidian vault is synced with iCloud, it might be useful to include a Application("DEVONthink").synchronize({record: theVault}) command in your Alfred Script Filter to make sure the latest changes to your vault are picked up by DT.
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As for searching inside DT with Alfred, I use a workflow for it.
Honestly I don’t remember where I’ve found it many time ago, but it works seamlessly.
Also, there many options: you can search for the single note, a group, you can make it open a file on an external tool or right inside DT.
You can have a look at their Gallery: maybe you find the workflow there.
Or you can search on some workflow related website.
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I can now search Obsidian in DT and it’s really incredible.