What to do with these files?

DEVONthink
1

Hi everyone,
I have a question: I just got a second Mac today to complement my desktop. I transferred all the information from my desktop to my laptop via Time Machine. Once that was done and I did a search in Finder for “DEVONthink,” I saw a bunch of DEVONthink files (not databases, just the files themselves) located under [Library → Metadata] that are no more than 15 KB at most. So they don’t take up much space on the drive, and if I hadn’t searched for them, I probably wouldn’t have noticed them.
What kind of files are these? Can I delete them?
After this, I imported the actual databases to the new computer.

Sorry if this is a stupid question :slight_smile:

Thanks in advance,
Pontus.

2

It’s metadata for Spotlight. If you delete them but still have Spotlight enabled in File > Database Properties, they’ll be created again.

3

Thanks @Bluefrog!
If I uncheck [Create spotlight index] from every database(I use Alfred, never Spotlight) - will those files disappear then? Or do I have to delete them manually? If I were to delete them, just speculating here hehe.

4

You’re welcome :slight_smile:
Unchecking that option will remove the cached metadata files automatically.

5

Thanks Bluefrog! :blush:

6

My pleasure.

7

However, you should know that Alfred relies on Spotlight indexing. So even if you don’t use Spotlight as a “frontend” for searching, you likely need it indexing your file system..

(Unless, of course, you are referring to search within DT only. I think DT creates its own index. So if you were referring to using Alfred to search within DT, then that should not require Spotlight indexing.)

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