DEVONthink, your paperless office

In this article, I want to talk about DEVONthink (macOS, iOS), an application developed by DEVONtechnologies.

DEVONthink is a veteran application in the Apple environment, well known in the professional area, but it will also help you to get organized on a personal level.

One of the best apps for file and information management.

What Exactly is DEVONthink?

One of the “problems” of DEVONthink is that it’s useful for so many things that it is difficult to summarize its purpose in a simple way, although one of my favorite ways to define it is the way they use on their website:

“DEVONthink is your paperless office.”

However that definition quickly falls a bit short, as you might think that DEVONthink is just for storing PDFs or notes, when in reality, it’s much more than that.

DEVONthink is capable of collecting and storing any type of document, not only PDFs or notes, but also images, audio files, links, complete web pages, and even videos.

And it doesn’t stop there, DEVONthink also has annotation tools, conversion and exporting tools, and even an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) that you can later use to perform searches.

All this is topped off with a powerful management and organization capabilities based on groups (“folders”), smart groups, tags, favorites, different interfaces, a search engine, or a “related items” section, which will help you connect the different items in your database automatically.

If you keep a huge amount of information, you probably need DEVONthink, as it will allow you to control your files with much more versatility than the Finder.

But you don’t need to be a great student or researcher to take advantage of DEVONthink, any profession that involves a significant flow of information, (for example a lawyer), will be more bearable thanks to DEVONthink.

Of course it is also useful for home use, to organize your invoices, contracts, and documents, tax returns, your list of articles to read later…

The possibilities are endless, although in such situations you may not need to purchase the professional version or the iOS version.

Let’s talk about apps and pricing now.

DEVONthink pricing

DEVONthink has a pricing system that is a bit complex to understand if you are new to the app/ecosystem.

This is because although you will find a version for Mac, and another universal version for iOS (that works on iPhone and iPad), the former has different editions or plans, while the latter, has an in-app purchase to unlock certain features.

Let’s look at them separately.

DEVONthink for macOS

For me at least, the essential one, since almost all my work is done on my MacBook Pro.

DEVONthink has 3 editions (versions) on the desktop app:

• DEVONthink Standard (one payment of $99)
• DEVONthink Pro (one payment of $199)
• DEVONthink Server (one payment of $499)

Any license will allow you to use DEVONthink on 2 devices.

First of all, don’t be scared by the price of the Server edition.

It is a special version focused on companies, whose main extra functionality is to allow you to share everything you store in DEVONthink through a web interface. You will probably don’t need it, but if so, this version allows you for instance to share your information between a Mac and a Windows. 

The price of having this feature though is expensive.

Differences between the Standard and the Pro version

The remaining editions are quite a bit more affordable (especially considering we are talking about one payment), however, it is interesting for you to know the main differences between them, as the price difference is twice as much.

Basically, the Pro edition unlocks the following features:

• Scanning with OCR: DEVONthink apply OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to your scans and PDFs, so you can search using the content/words inside those documents.
• Document stamping: this tool will allow you, for example, to mark all the pages of a PDF with the current time, the word “draft”, a serial number… You can even automate this process using rules.
• Import of mail files: you can store entire mailboxes from Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook in DEVONthink.

There are many more things that the Pro version unlocks compared to the standard version (you can see them here) but the most important are the ones I just mentioned. The rest are mainly focused on grouping and finding similar items within your library.

DEVONthink for iOS

The DEVONthink app for iOS, also known as DEVONthink To Go, offers different plans:

• Subscription plan:
  • Monthly payments of $1,99
  • Yearly payment of $16,49
• One payment of $39,99 ($19,99 if you are upgrading from a previous version)

If you plan on using the iOS app for more than 2 years, it’s worth it to make the single payment.

DEVONthink main features

Ultra-Organization

DEVONthink keeps all your items in databases, and you can create as many databases as you want (personal, professional, one for each project…) you can even password-protect them.

You can keep all of your databases open, or just open those you want to use, and in the future, you can also split a database in two, or combine two databases into one, so you can start with one and adapt your system as you need it.

In each database, you’ll be able to create groups where manually store your items (think of them as folders, so you will also be able to create sub-groups or sub-folders)

Want to be more efficient? Use smart groups, and let DEVONthink organize your documents using powerful rules: by kind, extension, width or height, size, language, date added… you have dozens of parameters available.

Some of these parameters are intrinsic to the elements (such as their date of creation) others can be added by you: tags, keywords, star rating….

Sync

Although you could use DEVONthink locally on your Mac, the app also has excellent sync capabilities.

Any database can sync to one or more locations using:

• Bonjour (direct connection)
• Local sync
• Dropbox
• iCloud
• WebDAV

PDF support

DEVONthink has an extensive support for PDF documents.

PDF Edits & Annotations

DEVONthink has its own PDF viewer that will allow you read documents inside the app, in addition to other more advanced actions like:

• Insert blank pages 
• Delete pages
• Rotate a pages
• Rearrange pages
• Reverse all the pages in the document
• Split a PDF into chapters: useful on PDFs that have a table of contents.

Thanks to DEVONthink you’ll also be able to:

• Add shapes: Oval tool, the Rectangle tool, Arrows…
• Add notes: i.e. comments that appear with a small reference icon at the location of your choice on the page
• Add text 
• Add links 
• Apply underline and strikethrough
• Highlight text

Stamp and Number Your Documents (Pro)

If you have the Pro Edition, you will be able to create stamps that you usually use for rapidly stamping PDFs or images. A smart way to apply stamps automatically, like adding sequential serial numbers or other identifiers.

Quickly create commonly used stamps in your PDFs and images, or have them automatically added to files when they meet user-defined criteria, automate it.

Other features

• Convert Documents: to Plain Text, Rich Text, HTML, Markdown, PDF, Pages, Word…
• Add reminders to your items
• Create and use templates: daily journal, meeting notes…
• Auto detect duplicates
• Copy item links and use them in other applications
• Add your RSS feeds and read your favourite blogs from DEVONthink.
• Create smart rules to automate recurring tasks

Other features

• Convert Documents: to Plain Text, Rich Text, HTML, Markdown, PDF, Pages, Word…
• Add reminders to your items
• Create and use templates: daily journal, meeting notes…
• Auto detect duplicates
• Copy item links and use them in other applications
• Add your RSS feeds and read your favourite blogs from DEVONthink.
• Create smart rules to automate recurring tasks

Is DEVONthink worth it?

If at some point you have felt that the Finder was not enough to organize your files and documents, it is likely that you need DEVONthink and you don’t really know it.

Even if you don’t have a tremendous amount of information to manage, it’s not at all a bad idea to start using the app, since as you’ve seen, it can also replace for instance a “read later” app thanks to the Safari extension, or it could be an excellent way of synchronizing files between your Mac and your iOS devices in an efficient and controlled way.

What I definitely like most about DEVONthink, is its scalability.

You can start working with the standard edition, create a single database, and use the minimal organizational tools you need, and if tomorrow you need more power or more features, you will only have to upgrade the edition, create more databases to segment your information, or use more powerful tools such as matching, work rules, or scripts.

But being such a powerful application comes at a price.

One of the big disadvantages of DEVONthink is probably its learning curve, if you have never used applications of this type, it is likely that you will find it hard to understand it, especially at the beginning.

DEVONthink is an application that is very worthwhile, maybe not for the casual user who has enough with the use of simple folders, but for those looking for something more, today there is no better solution on the market.