Navigate Sidebar

The “main” sidebar view, shown above in Figure 7, shows global items (such as the Inbox, tags, and Trash from your global database, plus smart groups and smart rules); it also displays your open and recent databases, and your favorite databases, documents, and groups (see All About Favorites). It’s handy to show this, for example, when you want to drag something from one database to another.

If you want to use the keyboard to move around within the Navigate sidebar, go to Settings/Preferences > General > Interface and select “Keyboard navigation” (in the Sidebar section). Having done that, you can do the following in the Navigate sidebar:

• Move up or down using ↑ or ↓.

• Expand or collapse a group using ← or →.

• Rename the selected item by pressing Return and typing a new name.

• Remove the selected item from the sidebar by pressing Delete or Backspace.

• Switch to the previous or next database with ⌘-Option-R and ⌘-Option-E, respectively.

By default, DEVONthink unifies all your databases under the Open Databases heading, and it unifies all your inboxes (in much the same way as Apple Mail) under the Globals heading. However, if you prefer, you can keep databases and/or inboxes separate.

You can alter these settings in Settings/Preferences > General > Interface in the Sidebar section:

• With “Unify databases” checked (the default), each database along with its contents is an entry under Open Databases (Figure 8, left). If you uncheck “Unify databases,” only the database names are shown under Open Databases; select one to show its expanded contents under its own sidebar heading (Figure 8, right).

  

• With “Unify inboxes” checked (the default), each database’s inbox appears in the Inboxes group under Globals (Figure 9, left). If you uncheck “Unify inboxes,” only the Global Inbox appears under Globals, while each database’s inbox appears under that database’s name in the Open Databases section (Figure 9, right).

Reading List Sidebar

The Reading List sidebar (Figure 10) functions much like the Reading List in Safari and other browsers: it displays documents you’ve marked for later reading.

To add a document to the Reading List, select it and choose Data > Add To > Reading List (or the comparable commands on the Action menu or the contextual menu). The Reading List maintains its own read/unread status for each document, separate from the document’s main status. Documents are marked unread by default, but when you select one, its status changes to read. (If All is selected at the top of the list, it shows both read and unread items; click Unread to show only unread items.) To remove an item from your Reading List (without deleting it from your database), right-click (or Control-click) it and choose Remove Item from the contextual menu. You can rearrange the Reading List via drag and drop.

Import Sidebar

The Pro and Server versions of DEVONthink have an Import sidebar (Figure 11), which adds yet another way to import scanned documents and email messages. For more details, see Scan Documents and Add Email Messages, respectively.

Extras Sidebar

The Extras sidebar, like the Support Assistant window, provides access to useful, up-to-date content and tools from DEVONtechnologies, including scripts, templates, smart rules, tips, tricks, and news (Figure 12).

View as Icons

Icon view (Figure 13), which displays large thumbnails of each document, is perhaps the least useful option. While in Icon view, you can use the slider on the information bar to adjust the size of the icons. You can also sort the icons in many ways (by name, kind, size, and so on) using the pop-up menu next to that slider.

In Icon view only, you can choose View > Show Details or View > Hide Details (⌘-Option-L) to toggle the display of additional details about each document or group (Figure 14), giving Icon view some of the additional benefits of List view.

View as List

List view (Figure 15) provides more detail about each document, as well as a hierarchical view of all your groups. By default, List view shows Name, Modified (date and time), Kind, Size, and URL columns. To change which columns appear, choose a column name from the View > List Columns submenu. As you might expect, you can sort by a column by clicking its name; reverse the sort order by clicking again; drag and drop to rearrange columns; and resize columns by clicking the border between two adjacent column headers and sliding the pointer left or right.

View as Columns

Column view (Figure 16) lets you quickly navigate a deep hierarchy of groups without losing your place or running out of room on the screen.

As in the Finder, you can drag the dividers between columns to resize them individually, Option-drag them to change the width of all columns at once, or double-click a separator to auto-resize to the width of the longest name. You can also sort by any criterion you prefer. To change the sort criterion, choose a command from the View > Sort submenu; choose Ascending or Descending from this menu to reverse the sort order.

View as Cover Flow

Cover Flow (Figure 17) displays a large thumbnail of each document in the current group in a horizontally scrolling list; it’s useful primarily for graphics. The selected item (in the middle; a bit larger than the others) shows a tooltip with the document’s name and resolution; a full-size image appears in the view/edit pane.

Widescreen

The widescreen preview option (View > Widescreen or ⌘-7), positions the view/edit pane on the right side rather than at the bottom. This arrangement makes more efficient use of screen real estate on large monitors (especially widescreen monitors). Figure 18 shows a widescreen preview along with List view; compare with Figure 15, which shows the same thing with a standard preview.

Full Screen

If you find screen clutter distracting, you can use either of two Full Screen modes. First, you can opt for macOS-style Full Screen mode, which applies to the entire DEVONthink window; to enter this mode, choose View > Full Screen > Window (⌘-Control-F) or click the Full Screen icon in the upper-left corner of the window. To leave Full Screen mode, press Esc.

Alternatively, you can use DEVONthink’s document-specific Full Screen mode. When you choose View > Full Screen > Document (⌘-F7), the selected document fills your entire screen; in the case of plain text and rich text documents, your entire screen turns black by default while text becomes bright green (Figure 19). To leave Full Screen mode, press Esc.

To adjust Full Screen mode’s font, size, colors, and text width, go to Settings/Preferences > Editing and make changes in the Full Screen section.

Info Inspector

Besides listing statistics about the current document, this inspector (Figure 22) lets you rename the document; exclude it from classification, search, See Also, and tagging; modify labels and tags; see and navigate to duplicates and replicants; add aliases; and lock or unlock the document. I discuss many of these activities elsewhere.

The Properties tab, which was located in the Document inspector before version 3.9, includes items such as author, title, subject, and keywords.

DEVONthink Pro and Server expand the capabilities of the Info inspector by adding a Custom tab, where you can add any of numerous built-in or user-defined metadata types. To learn more about metadata generally and custom metadata specifically, refer to Work with Metadata, later in this book.

In case the inspector is hidden or displaying a different pane, you can also display the information from the Info inspector in a popover by selecting a document and choosing Tools > Get Info (⌘-Shift-I) or clicking the Info icon on the toolbar.

Annotations & Reminders Inspector

The Annotations & Reminders inspector (Figure 23) provides the tools to set reminders (including alarms) about the current document (see Use Reminders), view or add Finder comments, and add or edit annotations (separate files containing comments about this file; see Template).

In this context, an annotation is a text note you add to a document, group, tag, or other item. You can type your notes in the Annotations field here or in the field that appears when you choose Tools > Get Info (⌘-Shift-I) and click the Annotations & Reminders icon. DEVONthink stores these annotations as separate documents (annotation files) that are linked to the originals; you can see them, for example, in the Annotations smart group at the top level of the database.

Content Inspector

The Content inspector displays the table of contents for PDF, Markdown, and EPUB documents that include one; it also shows thumbnails for PDF documents (Figure 24). Both the table of contents and the thumbnails are live, so you can click an item to navigate to that point in the selected document.

Document Inspector

The Document inspector (Figure 25) shows a wide variety of document-level metadata.

The Annotations tab shows highlights in RTF files and PDF annotations (not to be confused with DEVONthink’s annotation files); the Attachments tab displays attachments in files that support them; the Links tab shows any hyperlinks found in PDF and RTF files, as well as in web archives and other web-based documents (outgoing links are found at the top under the Links heading, while incoming links are found at the bottom under the Incoming Links heading; see Work with Item Links and WikiLinks for more on using links); and the Mentions tab shows other documents that mention this one (by including this document’s name, prepended with an @ sign, somewhere in the text).

Concordance Inspector

Do you wonder whether you’re overusing certain words, or are you curious about how often certain terms in a document occur relative to other terms? Select the document and choose Tools > Inspectors > Concordance > List or click the Concordance icon in the inspector. The Concordance inspector (Figure 26) lists every word in your document by frequency (number of occurrences).

I discuss the Concordance in more detail later, including how to use the feature across multiple documents—or even an entire database—and the Cloud and Graph options (see Search Using the Concordance).

See Also & Classify Inspector

One of DEVONthink’s coolest and most powerful features is found in the See Also & Classify inspector. The See Also and Classify features use artificial intelligence to help you determine where a document should go and what other documents may be related to it.

To open this inspector (Figure 27), select a single document and then choose Tools > Inspectors > See Also & Classify (Control-S). You can use the controls just under the search field to choose whether the analysis is done by content or (if applicable) by tags, and whether it’s confined to the current database. The next portion of the inspector lists groups that may be a good place to store the document. The bottom portion lists other documents that have similar contents to the one you’ve selected. I discuss these features further in Classify Documents.

Search Inspector

DEVONthink offers several ways of searching, but the Search inspector (Figure 28) is the place to go if you want to search and/or replace within the current document. Matches are listed at the bottom of the inspector and highlighted in the view/edit pane. To learn more about searching within a document, see Search Within a Document.