DEVONtechnologies’ applications can interact with your system and other applications to create a interconnected computing experience. In Apple’s parlance, “It just works”. Or should I say, “It just worked”? To increase security in macOS Mojave, Apple has decided people need to give more permission to applications that want to access certain kinds of data on your machine. As of this writing, the protected areas are: Mail, Messages, Safari, Home, and Time Machine. (more)

Say you are working on a saved document in an application on your Mac and suddenly feel the need to add it to your DEVONthink database. You can close the document, locate the file, and drag it into the database. Or you can drag the proxy icon. But what’s the proxy icon? It’s the icon next to the title at the top of the window in many macOS applications. Just click-and-hold it (it will turn grey to show it’s selected), then drag away. (more)

There are times people want to use Apple’s Spotlight to search for a file in a DEVONthink database. Without going too deeply in technical matters, Spotlight doesn’t index inside the type of file a DEVONthink database is. Due to this, we use a technique to write out some of the metadata for Spotlight to index. (more)

As mentioned last week, we sometimes receive support requests from people where the best option is to restore data from backups. All too often we find out they have not been diligent in keeping their backups current, and some have never even started them! Is there really no solution for them? For people who have used Time Machine but haven’t connected their backup drives in some time, there may be hope as Time Machine keeps a local hidden backup too. (more)

If there’s one difficult question to ask in Support, it’s: “Do you have current local backups of your DEVONthink databases?” Too often, the answer is, “No” or “I’ve been thinking about starting backups, but I need to restore my data now!” This is a heartbreaking response to hear, and one we want to hear less and less. (more)

When syncing DEVONthink on macOS, you have the option of using a local sync location, called a local sync store. Technically it’s a folder on a volume that keeps databases in syncable form. Since it’s writing directly to a local disk, it’s by far the fastest and most transparent sync option. (more)

With the announcement of Box to discontinue WebDAV, here are some tips on switching DEVONthink to a new cloud service.

If you’re syncing DEVONthink on a Mac, it’s a simple process: … (more)

Despite the availability of affordable, high capacity external drives, modern laptops often come equipped with much smaller drives. This requires more judicious storage habits and paying closer attention to how much space is left. While you can find utilities that display this information in attractive types of charts, etc. you can get very good information directly from the operating system in macOS El Capitan and later. (more)

Split Screen mode in macOS has been around for some time and it’s a great way to view two documents at once, but in a fullscreen mode. This even works with two applications, as long as the windows are in the same Space. (more)

Many of us have files from word processing applications, like Word or Pages, in our databases. These kinds of files are proprietary and not editable in DEVONthink. However, you can preview them. But what if you need to copy some text from one of them? Do you need to fire up your word processor just to make a quick copy of some text? (more)