What view(s) do you use in DEVONthink?

The way column view focuses on a group is cool. I shouldn’t have let myself get stuck in list view.

For exploring hierarchies column view suits my tastes better than lists. Nice to have options.

Widescreen/List view (Standard/List rarely). I use the SideBar to navigate, so Columns is TMI (I can always click the Info icon in the toolbar.) Use Widescreen/Icons view for databases with images. Cover Flow thumbnails too big in Widescreen/List view; works OK in Standard but don’t find it useful enough to use; prefer to reduce size of thumbnails in List view.

yes, same here

This is why I love this Forum. (Long-time lurker, 1st time poster). I had always been using Navigate/List/Standard, which worked really well for me, as I use very long file names and liked that the Standard View gave me the full length of the display to see them. Over time I got used to the documents being displayed horizontally.

But after reading this thread, I decided to try Navigate/List/Widescreen for a day, and much to my amazement, I liked it even more. I can read the long file names just fine, and now much prefer the vertical display of each document. I no longer find myself having to adjust and scroll so much to read each document.

So thank you OP for the topic, and thank you all for the advice. It just improved my workflow.

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My mom wanted me to let everyone in this forum know: We’ve been a CMD-2 and CMD-5 family since 2008. Our principle: file-listing windows should be dense to provide overview, and text windows should be untethered. To keep things neat, we have a script that tiles all text using key command.

Now, I have an anthropological question that maybe Jim and Christian might want to re-ask as a poll:

Question: Is our preference for a Finder-like experience just habit (since it continues our first imprint from the Lisa and Mac days), or is it intrinsically superior?

2 posts were split to a new topic: Tiling Text Windows

In my case, list view in widescreen, even in my 13" MBP with Inspectors hidden, but I mostly am a “document reader”, as that is the most-showing-document-real-estate option.

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And as an added plus - you can add columns as desired in WideScreen. For a long time this was not obvious to me - it makes the view even more useful.

I have a strong doorway syndrome, like when you go into another room and can’t remember why you got up. It’s not from bad memory, it’s from context shifting.

The nicest thing about The Brain, to me, was constantly shifting contexts. That drove better focus in thinking.

Column view helps trigger that doorway effect, diving into different holding tanks, so to speak.

By the way, don’t feel sorry for the guy who can’t remember why he got up. Mourn for the guy who can.

If I want to remember to get the vegan adrenalhydrocholine monoclonal chiral mesolithic extract for the family gerbil the next time I go to Walmart, all I have to do is imagine walking into Walmart and seeing “vegan adrenalhydrocholine monoclonal chiral mesolithic extract” spray painted on the floor. It might be weeks before I go into a Walmart, but when I hit that context switch at the Walmart door, the family gerbil gets what he needs.

Try it. Imagine remembering something in a different physical context. It will pop into your head when you enter the context. Great memory trick.

Which reminds me. Column view is pretty cool.

I was today years old when I learned this. Thanks.

It puts DT slightly closer to the column management one has in AVID Media Composer, what I would consider a gold standard of metadata management, for both visualizing and modifying the metadata. There’s a long way to go to get there but I would rather have custom metadata in DTTG before any of that.

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I use 'em all. List/Widescreen for reading, List/Standard for note taking in Markdown, Screenflow for browsing PDFs. I tend to use Icon View only to look at my indexed stock photo libraries.

Did you and @SlickSlack vote?

Almost right away!

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Yes. I clicked all 4 boxes.

Thanks for participating. :slight_smile:

I use colums and close the sidebar. This way with keys I can ‘walk’ through my database with the hierarchical tag structure I made. Apart from the list view with the results of a search I spent most of my time in this column setup.

Below the columsview is a view of the selected note.

Yep, same here.

Still would love a good icon view option. For me, I have a lot of images. Navigating using Lists makes sense. But… if I click on a folder while in List view… I still somehow expect an icon view of contents of the folder in the view pane. I don’t know what triggers that in me, but in any case I would like it…

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There’s a hidden preference

Copy this link and open it in Safari

x-devonthink://preference?key=DisplayGroupsInPreviewPane&value=yes

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Ohmigod Pete, thank you so much!

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Almost exclusively Navigate, List, Widescreen, with the inspectors column also open on the right (so a “4-column” format). One of the advantages of having a 27" screen is plenty of real estate. But then I always tend to use a “list-type” view, such as in the Finder, Music, TV, etc., probably as a result of being left-brained.

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