I just made the move from Evernote to DT3 Pro. I love everything about it on the Mac, but my issues come into play on DTTG on my iPhone Xs.
First, a bit of history…
- I only used Evernote as a digital file cabinet for PDF/JPG documents/receipts/etc.
- My whole library in Evernote was about 17k notes and about 12GB.
- In DT3, I have all of these notes in about 6 or so databases.
- I am using a local WebDAV server as my sync source (on a Synology NAS) but don’t open that up to the Internet so all syncing is done locally. I figured if I do get in a pinch, I can connect to my VPN on my phone and run a sync remotely, but that’s just in a pinch and I realize it will probably be pretty slow.
- I’ve set up DTTG using WebDAV just fine. I’ve disabled iCloud sync.
- My iPhone has 256GB and I have like 150GB available so I don’t even mind it having 12GB on my phone.
One of my favorite features of Evernote was being able to hop onto my phone, search and pull up literally any document in seconds.
Everything seems to run fast while syncing on DTTG, but no matter how long I babysit this thing (constantly goes to sleep so I have to keep waking it) I can’t get the process to fully finish. I’ve deleted and reinstalled the app a few times with different options, but nothing I do helps it finish.
I’ve got the Pro Features purchased so I tried it both with Download Always and Download On Demand. I haven’t been able to get it to fully complete the sync with either. It’s just constantly indexing, generating previews, etc.
Is my library just too big for DTTG to work reliably?
Do you have any other options for allowing me to search and pull up documents while away from my Mac?
Thanks for your help!
Welcome @jacobgraf
Disable letting the device sleep temporarily.
DTTG should be in the foreground and the mobile device awake for the initial sync. The Background App Refresh option is controlled entirely by iOS and only allows approximately a 30 second window, when it allows it to happen. This means we can’t control if, when, or how long it happens. Subsequent syncs are faster since there’s less data being transferred.
Got it. I’ll give it a shot.
Given all the other information I listed, does the way I use, and plan to use this, fall outside the scope of the product or is DT3 Pro and DTTG designed to handle this amount of files/storage? Are there any soft limits I should know about for the future?
Also, what does the cloud icon look like in DTTG when the sync is “complete”? I see a white outline now, but I’m not sure if that means it’s “done” or “stuck” or what. Would love to see a checkmark there if it’s all done syncing and up-to-date with the WebDAV server.
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Do you use a 5GHz WiFi connection?
AFAIK there is no size limit, but @BLUEFROG is probably a better source to confirm or deny that.
It’s explained in the manual on page 45
There’s no published limit but here’s my treatise on database size…
Size in gigabytes isn’t the critical number. If you check out File > Database Properties > … for a given database, the number of words / unique words are more critical. On a modern machine with 8GB RAM, a comfortable top limit is 200,000,000 words and 4,000,000 unique words in a database. (Note: This does not scale in a linear way, so a machine with 16GB wouldn’t necessarily have a comfortable limit of 400,000,000 words / 8,000,000 unique words.) So text content in a database is far more important.
- If you have a database of images, it will have very few words but be large in gigabytes.
- If you have a database of emails, it will have many words, but may be smaller in gigabytes.
The second one may perform more poorly as the number of words increases beyond the comfortable limit.
Also, for best performance we suggest a maximum of 250,000 items per database.
Smaller, more focused databases will generally perform better, Sync faster, and be more data-safe in the event of a catastrophe (avoiding the “all your eggs in one basket” problem) . They also give you the opportunity to close unused databases when you’re not using them. This frees up resources, not only for DEVONthink, but the rest of the system. There is no benefit to having a bunch of unused databases open all the time.
Note: This applies mostly to DEVONthink on the Mac, with the assumption people carry less data on mobile (especially due to hardware and resource limitations).
The one thing you’ll have to be aware of is there is a 10MB size limit on formatted notes, so if you have composed Evernote notes with many images / attachments they *may not be viewable in DEVONthink To Go. You can set up a smart group in DEVONthink to see if you have any running up against this limit…
