Occasional DevonThink user here — I’m one of those people who go from one note-taking app to another. I’m getting tired of this game and now I’m back to DevonThink, and have been using it for weeks and am happy.
However, I’m not happy with the built-in Markdown editor, and will be exploring other options. But first, I need to know what happens if I forgetfully close DevonThink while a document is open in an external application, or if DevonThink crashes while I have a document open in another app. Will the document be lost or corrupted? I think not — DevonThink is just a bunch of folders, right? But I want to be sure.
I thought about asking here, but then I figured that I would simply be redirected to the documentation. Which is long, and I don’t want to read it.
Then I had a brainstorm: Upload the manual to ChatGPT, then ask ChatGPT, while also pointing ChatGPT to the devontechnologies.com for other information.
And I did, and ChatGPT answered. Short answer: It’s fine, so long as I save the document while I’m working. Which is true no matter what app I’m using.
Here’s the exchange, for the benefit of those of you who are interested in that kind of thing:
I’m uploading the document for a Mac application called DevonThink. Review the document and the DevonThink website https://www.devontechnologies.com/ and answer this question: If I have a DevonThink document open in an external application, and I close Devonthink or the app crashes while the document is open, will the document be corrupted or lost? For example, is it a problem if I have a Microsoft Word document stored in DevonThink and open in Word and I close DevonThink or the app crashes while the document is open.
If you have a document open in an external application like Microsoft Word and close DEVONthink (or if it crashes), your document generally remains safe as long as it was saved externally before closing. DEVONthink allows files to be opened in other applications without dependency on its own state, meaning that a crash or shutdown usually won’t corrupt the document. However, saving regularly within the external application is recommended to ensure all changes are preserved independently of DEVONthink.
For further details, refer to oai_citation:1,DEVONtechnologies | How to Open Files Externally.
What do you mean “saved externally”? Do you mean I have to save outside the DevonThink database? That would defeat the purpose of using DevonThink.
No, saving “externally” doesn’t mean outside of DEVONthink. When you open a file from DEVONthink in an external app (like Word), changes you save within that app are written back to DEVONthink’s database. Closing DEVONthink or a crash should not impact these changes because they are stored immediately by the external app. However, if a crash interrupts an unsaved file, changes might be lost, so regular saves within the external application ensure nothing is lost regardless of DEVONthink’s state.
So now I’ll be looking into Markdown editors to use in conjunction with DevonThink.
That said, I’d love to see DevonThink’s Markdown editor get some design love. Make it beautiful, like Bear, Ulysses or the Obsidian editor.
Personally I prefer Claude 3.5 Sonnet for complex tasks and Gemini Flash for simple ones (due to its speed and huge context window)
I’m sorry if I came across harsh; I tried to be measured and constructive. But I do get a bit pissed off when my impression is someone is unwilling to put in any effort yet expects other people to contribute meaningfully/do the work for them.