+1 Would be incredibly useful
+1, this is a really useful feature that would make me very happy not to have to move to something like Roam. I can get similar functionality using apple script, but it’s clunky and not optimal. Being able to generate and include backlinks in my docs is a very important feature for the way I take and manage notes.
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May I be bold and cheeky?
It seems to me the underlying tagging support could support links with backlinks.
A “link to other item” function could tag the other item with the source item’s UUID.
Showing linked items would be the same as showing a tag group using the source item’s UUID.
To show backlinks, show a search for UUID’s equal to all hidden UUID tags on the current item. That would be a list of source link UUID’s.
Don’t you just hate it when some bozo says “all you have to do is?” 
Don’t you just hate it when some bozo says “all you have to do is?”
Yes, but we don’t say so out loud.
KIDDING!! 
+1 as well.
Will try out the scripts solution that @Bernardo_V posted but a native solution would be so powerful!
Not to discourage anyone from requesting, but it seems it’s not possible to implement this
+1
Actually Wiki links will be supported too by the Document > Links inspector. But other features (like searching for items with incoming/outgoing links or sorting by number of incoming/outgoing links or scripting) will be limited to item links.
5 Likes
I’ve come to realize I’m OK with or without an automated backlinks feature. People seem to believe one needs this functionality for proper implementation of a Zettelkasten.
However, the most famous user of a Zettelkasten, Niklas Luhmann, did this with Zettel on paper. He had no automatic backlink function, and still, his Zettelkasten worked so wonderfully that we all want to have a Zettelkasten ourselves. So either a Zettelkasten doesn’t need automated backlinking or Luhmann added backlinks manually.
And I’ve come to realize that adding those backlinks manually might have a point: you need to read the Zettel linked to and write a sentence why it links back, which means you have to think about the linking and the linked-to Zettel and read them and this is the intensive engagement with your Zettel that drives the value of your Zettelkasten.
Doing it manually, you have to read both Zettels. Doing it automatically, there’s the option to read them both, which is a difference.
So I’m going to be fine either way, doing it manually for now.
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I’m glad I misunderstood that. That’s great!
Yes, backlinks are not really a requirement for a Zettelkasten, but neither should there be a dogmatic definition of the ZK. One could equally say that since Luhmann did just fine with a paper version, taking it digital is unnecessary. No, Luhmann did not have that option, and neither did he have the possibility to implement automatic backlinks. We can only speculate how he would design his ZK in 2020. My guess is that he would make use of all new techniques that make his workflow smoother, as long as they don’t diminish the intellectual engagement with the ZK. I’m curious what he would think about auto-generated wikilinks. To me they are the worrisome ones, because they create connections without engagement. Backlinks, on the other hand, are “just” a consequence of having made deliberately a forward connection. In my view, that justifies autogenerating them.
I started making manual backlinks, which is fine. As you mention, in principle it could be even beneficial, since you have to mentally engage with both notes when implementing them (even though, if you create them in pairs, you have just dealt with both notes to begin with, so the engagement is already happening). However, each of us has a threshold where doing a certain task becomes too cumbersome, and we start shying away from it (“OK, I’ll add the backlinks on the weekend” ➝ aka never going to happen). In my case, I believe that I would struggle in the long term to keep manual backlinks up to date.
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Thanks for these insights! The point about the Zetteling not becoming tedious is somethink I need to keep in mind, also with regard to the technicalities involved.
For me it’s just the conclusion of taking my Zettelkasten to Obsidian or staying with it in DevonThink. And for the moment, I stay in DT. And this was one of the more important differences.
Also, yeah: don’t use automated WIKI links in your Zettelkasten. I agree.
+1 for this and I can’t wait! aha notion just did it too. back linking is the talk of the town! DT will become a beautiful companion for obsidian
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I’d say, tongue in cheek, that N. Luhmann’s brain was his “automatic backlinking device” ! Yes, I totally agree that the personal involvement with one’s ZK is what makes it a wonderful thinking tool.
Backlinks are useful for me when I’m on a particular note, especially an atomic one, and I’m wondering “do I have already mentioned or referenced it somewhere ?” The answer is not necessarily evident, because I’m still in the process of organising some 2’000 notes/ideas I had written in nvALT over the years. I have never had the “guts” nor the patience to do it with DEVONthink. It’s a Joy to do it with Obsidian ! It’s handling of links, mainly internal ones is brilliant ! (For those who think it could be easily done in DEVONthink : please take into account that I’m writing in French and that accented letters make things more complicated regarding links, especially “automatic” ones. It seems to never work like you’d like them to. In some softwares, you can’t even double click a word like “Hélène”, because it breaks at the accented letters ! Yes, even in 2020 !) The pipe syntax [[filename|displayed text]] renders things more practical and enjoyable. I wish DEVONthink and other softwares would adopt it. Isn’t it also in use on Wikipedia ? So, I guess, one could consider it a de facto standard.
You can count me as a further user/fan of both DT and Obsidian. I’m writing notes and linking them mainly in Obsidian — for one thing, it’s Markdown editor is way more advanced than the “just functional” one in DT.
- I’ve got a DEVONthink database that indexes my Obsidian vault(s), it works perfectly.
- When it’s useful, I write — while in Obsidian — Markdown links to items inside my different DT databases — generally folders of reference material. It works perfectly, they are “clickable” in both DT and Obsidian.
Thus, I think I get the best of both worlds. Praise for Markdown files !
To conclude, count me +1 for a backlinks feature in DEVONthink, this wonderful software that I’ve been enjoying since version 1, so many years ago !
Cheers,
Olivier 
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I see that “See Also & Classify” Inspector Tab is not yet mentioned here. I use that feature to show the backlinks and unlinked references. There is no clear separator/difference between those two, and it is a bit hit-and-miss. For example, a markdown link with item link as destination x-devonthink-item:// often not recognized in this tab.
But in my usage, that feature is good enough.
(That makes me laugh, every time)
Please explain. Not easy to think of “See Also & Classify”, but once I found it, it looked good. However, it is not listing files that are linking back, I thought, but files with text what DevonThink makes out to be related for whatever reason.
So how do you explicitly get back links to show?
like I said, in my usage the “See Also & Classify” is good enough and kinda hit and miss.
for example, this is a note I take from article I captured (trying to implement Zettelkasten):
Then if I open the captured article, it shows this:
Where in 1b1 and 1b2 I mentioned the article with wiki link [[Goodbye, Clean Code]].
But in few other notes that mentions other note/captured article/book, it didn’t show the relation in the “See Also & Classify”. Thus, I say hit and miss, but good enough.
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I also would like to add my +1 to this feature request. It would be wonderful to have. Fun fact: In my DT2 days, I tried to implement a digital Zettelkasten that would take advantage of modern features and in the end opted to use ikiwiki instead of DT because of its Backlink feature.
My note system has evolved and moved around in the past years as have my requirements about what application to use as the shelter for my notes, but I would love to use DT for it and I’m not against having backlinks available at all (it’s one of the reasons why I consider using Obsidian atm).
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