Goodbye DEVONthink ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RpH6iV7PMQQ/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Curtis McHale]] - Full Title: Goodbye DEVONthink - Category: #articles - Summary: #pkm #devonthink #zettelkasten Why am I leaving DEVONthink? This video was sponsored by Reflect.app. You can get a free 14-day trial at: https://reflect.app?utm_source=curtismchale Become a member: https://curtismchale.ca/membership Take all my courses: https://curtismchale.ca/education Maximize Apple Reminder: https://skl.sh/3GSe4HS Join my free PKM Newsletter: https://curtismchale.ca/pkm-weekly **Chapters** 00:00 - Intro 00:22 - Why Leave DEVONthink 01:25 - How I Use DEVONthink 03:58 - Stuff I Don't Use 07:15 - Reflect.app 09:24 - New Tool Features 12:30 - Software Options 15:58 - Choosing a New Application 17:47 - Outro ## Courses Members get all my courses: https://curtismchale.ca/membership ### SkillShare - SkillShare TickTick Course: https://skl.sh/2ExpXVv - SkillShare Timeblocking Course: https://skl.sh/38MQzz8 - SkillShare Zettelkasten Course: https://skl.sh/3rntNDW - Getting Started with Obsidian Course: https://skl.sh/2Y6DUDM - Building the Practice of Productivity: https://skl.sh/3oaxLj7 -... - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RpH6iV7PMQQ&feature=share welcome today we're going to talk aboutditching Devon thinkbecause now I have a framework laptop inmy life running Fedora 37 and that doesnot work on links on anything but Mac OSsystemsbefore we do that I want you to knowthat today's video is sponsored byreflect app we'll talk more about thatlater buckle up let's talk aboutditching Dev and think and some of theoptions so like I said I have aframework laptop in my life now it isgreat I mean I really really have beenliking it it's nice to have a laptop again it's nice that it's modular it'snice that you know they just came outwith new upgrades about two weeks afterI bought it and I could buy any of theupgrades and put them in my laptop Ilove it I can get a matte screen I canupgrade to the AMD chips I cannot readthe ram I can take the old main boardand turn it into a standalone computersomewhere else I love all of that butnow I realize it has some softwarelock-in specifically in Devon think inmy note-taking system everything onlyruns on Mac OS it only runs on iPad iOSthat's it nowhere else so I'm kind ofstuck in what I use kind of as my readlabor read later service and as my tool for other people's thoughts because Ilike to have two systems one is Devinthink currently for other people'sthoughts and one is Obsidian form mythoughts for my notes for the things Ireally want to capture about these othertoolsso let's talk about what I currentlyused everything for and just some of myoptions or some things I don't use inDevon think that I've talked aboutbefore and said oh this is a greatfeature don't actually use it ever andthen some of the options for thisso a few super different things one ofthe first ones is keeping other people'sthoughts you can see here I have the endof thought from the end of organizing um end of organizing and just talkingabout thoughts so articles I want toread later things that I want for myselfthings that I want to keep track of Ikeep these around in Devon think I don'tuse instapaper some other relays laterservice I keep them all in Devon thinkbecause if I'm going to keep track ofthem if I'm going to take notes on thembut I want to have a link to them forlater that is permanent that's not youknow like a web link that can just diebecause they die regularly I want to beable to dig into it and find it laterthe second thing I use Devon think for is under my personal vaultand there'll be manuals in here rightmanuals so what is thisfor a bridge keyboard which I don't useanymore right or foruh our washing machine or for an airconditioner anymore for lots of otherthings for LEGO instructions rightkeyboards I should have Legoinstructions in here so I'll actuallyprobably have my own Lego instructionone as well Lego instructions rightthereso I have Lego instructions for all the Lego things we have so we have the LEGOinstruction books long term that's theother thing I used everything for tokeep track of it's a long-term PDF stuffmanuals on the car charger because Ihave a you know a booster slash chargerfor the car manuals on on the car evenon like fixing things stuff like thatvideos for fixing replacing which fusesfor certain projects I keep manuals forthat in Devon think as welland the third thing which we also kindof saw that I use it regularly for isreceipts so you can see at 2014 15 16 18up to 2023 if all my receipts here for all of those years stored as PDFs andCanada I don't actually have to keep thephysical receipt so I can scan them alland just save them as PDFs and then theycount just fine so I have been paperlesssince 2014 uh now and I don't need tokeep any of those receipts anymore infact I think I can start deleting someof these because I want to keep them forseven years so I'm actually to a pointwhere I can delete some of my old stuffin Devin think although it kind ofdoesn't matter in some ways because it'snot enough storage for me to care aboutnow a single app does not have to do allthese things for me currently I'd be up for taking something that's researchfocused and then something that I canyou know do storage of these notes up bythe PDFs of my receipt stuff like thatand having two apps I'm up for that butideally it all be in one and it wouldhave some of the features that I do usein Devon think where I attempt to usethe automation where it shouldautomatically file things label thethree seats found that to bequestionable it works sometimessometimes it doesn't workum but there's also a bunch of featuresI don't use a different thing that Italked about before that we canhighlight right now first off see also so I've talked about this and said heyit can show you other stuff and honestlydon't use it right so for this articlehere you can shrink that and makea little bit bigger you can see it talksabout uh other articles that may berelated to this no I just never use itall right so Chain of Thought the mostrelated article is the article itselfand it talks about other ones rightbrain is neither a neural network orcomputer book review for the biologicalmind social categorization andbehavioral episodes right but I actuallynever use any of this so I don't care if it has it I have never probably once ortwice in a year I open up the C also Taband I look at it and think oh yeahthat's great I might look at one or twoarticles but at no point do I rememberlooking at it and saying hey this isawesome and I never would have made adisconnection before I'm so glad I havethe C also featureit's okay if you use it great but I'venever really found it to be that usefulwell Devon think also has the optionright here if I go to import and hitwebsite I can type in a web address here and Ican import an entire site it'll followall the links and grab everything andI've done this before for my own sitethinking hey it's great to have a longterm archive for myself but the truth isI never do anything with it so itdoesn't matter not a feature I'm goingto worry about in a future tool becauseI'm never going to use it because Inever have used it in yearsanother feature Devon think has thatI've never really used is RSS featuresso I can actually add RSS feeds in hereand have articles brought in for meautomatically I get why this could be good for somepeople that they really want to have alltheir articles in here and if you'rejust going to take notes on it this isgreat but I actually like the extrafriction of having my RSS tool to besomething else I'm going to push it toDev and think otherwise you're like Ialready saved more than I really get toever but it's just gonna be worse whenit's easierum so having a tool I have to push intoDevon think to actually make itworthwhile right then article has toactually graduate to the level where I'mgoing to say this is worthwhile to keepand so then I push it into demon thingRSS not something I'm going to worryabout either so websites RSS out I just don't even need them another featurethat Devin think has is WikiLeaks so Ican actually use Devon think as a fullknowledge management system I don't needto have a separate tool like obsidianbut again like I said I really want tokeep other people's thoughts in one spotin my thoughts in another spotum keeping them separate means that Ihave to actually put effort in I can'tjust save an article and you know fallinto collector's fallacy and say heyI've collected it I've totally donesomething with it I actually have topush it into my note-taking tool inobsidian to make it worthwhile toactually have a note on it I don't havea note that is you know linkable and everything like that if it's only indifferent think only if I've taken thetime to process it another thingdifferent thing has is tags so there aretags where are they aliases right we canAlias folders it's lots of stuff we cantag down here I I've never used it Ijust I I don't don't even care like it'sanother feature where people say Hey youcan tag it likebut if I'm going to push it off intoobsidian and really take good care of itand like take a good note on it thenthat is the better spot to do all my tagging to actually process it there andI use this is called tag notes to linkthat up above whichever side it is onYouTubeum and I use Tag notes there to actuallyreally reference and track my backlinksto tags so they can see what is relevantwhat is not and so I never use this inhere at all many things to reflectapp.app for sponsoring this videoso what if you select app reflect app isa note-taking tool it's available on MacOS it's available on iPad OS it'savailable in the web it's available in acouple different variations for you it is an app run almost entirely byEngineers not a bunch of VC fundingstuff but not like chasing monetizationthey're not chasing all these otherthings they're focusing on a fast appthat really helps you think better oneof the things I love about is that theyoffer Kindle syncing right in the app soyou don't need another service to syncyour notes to Kindle to your actualnote-taking tool you can actually keepyour Kindle notes right in reflect appfor you I also love the design you cansee it hereand I've just started up for my long term later review you see here thedesign is really clean I like it a lotum and I also like that you have yourown encryption key so when I sign intothe app I give my own encryption keythat is just for me and you get arecovery kit with it as well so that ifyou lose your password and you lose yourrecovery kit you're in a lot you need toactually make sure you keep these thingsI actually far prefer that than havingum like me having to keep track of myown encryption Keys then I do you knowthem being able to get it too becausethat means they can get their notes if a application can open up your notes foryou again because they have a keybecause they say oh don't worry we canopen it up for you that means it's notactually secure that means they can doit anytime they want Reflex has justalso introduced chat GPT so gpt4integration with the app to help youwith your writing I've used this a bunchrecently to help me find good YouTubetitles other stuff like that so that Ican you know just do better at thataspect of It the YouTube part that I amat least affected at reflect app lets medo that right inside the app so that Ican you know not have to go off to the chat GPT site and have it right in theapp I would use for note-taking otherthings it allows you to do is sync yourcalendar so you can take meetings onyour notes right there in the app foryou don't have to go to another app youdon't have to you know make another noteit's right there you can create yournote for that meeting in the app so ifyou're interested in reflect app go toreflect.app sign up for your 14 day freetrial and watch for my full reviewcoming in a week or two all right now ifI'm looking for a new tool let's talkabout what I'm specifically looking forfirst off I want to be able to controlthe sync currently Devin thinks syncs with iCloud for me which is fine I havea drive cloud storage with i apple stuffbecause I got a family doing stuff musicapp all the other stuff but I want to beable to store it on my own sync I don'twant to sync someone else's servers Iwant to be able to kind of keep track ofit myself I guess I'm thinking ofsomeone else's servers with iCloud but Ido have a Synology behind me I caninstall next Cloud on it I would love tobe able to just sync it with my Synologyand have my own contained notes on myown server that I control so that Idon't have other people you know in theway of that hopefully that's stable but we'll findout as we go forward second like thatsome type of Automation and I am up forsome python scripting some otherscripting that I will have to do to makethis happen because I'd like to haveautomation across both platforms thatworks on Mac OS something that works onLinux as well and that is likely a toollike python you know the scriptinglanguage programming this is okay for mebecause I am a programmer I can learnPython and I can do the scripting but Iwould like some automation so that allmy receipts actually go to the properreceipt folderDevin think has this although I've had to be problematic it only workssometimes it works for a bit and then itstops working and I don't fix it for along time and I just it's not doing itanymore but currently it's not doing itbecause it stopped working for somereason I don't know whyit's just not easy anyways so I'd liketo have easier automation a way to haveconsistent automation even if it's justsay running something on my server on mySynology to make automation happen so Ican have all my receipts categorized forme at least you know put into the rightyear folder I don't care if it's youknow gas whatever else but put it intothe right folder so that I don't have to do it to myselfthird needs to be cross-platform so Iwant to have an app for Mac OS one havean app for iPad OS iOS I'd like to havea lot app for Windows although I don'thave Windows machine but without apossibility I'd like to have an app forLinux so that I am not locked in by avendoras I said I got that Linux machine andthen I started looking around being likeah but this tool is Mac only and uh wellit just makes my Computing life harderto be locked inso I'm gonna be moving away from that Iwould like to move away from that inlots of different areas obsidian isalready there you know email I can use email clients from anything so email isalready on every systemum but Devin think wasn't I'd like tohave a tool that is on every platformnow pay some people are going to say heyyou're on Linux you want open source Idon't actually care if it's open sourceopen source is great but being adeveloper that does open source stuffand people saying oh well why do youeven charge for anything people shouldjust donate nobody donates anything likeif I relied on donations only to make aliving then I'd be out of a job I wouldhave no job I would not be doing thisvideos I would not be doing anythinglike that so I'm willing to pay for the app I don't mind paying for the app Idon't mind any way paying for it I paidI don't know three four hundred dollarsfor Devon think use it for a number ofyears and then they you know they comewith a new version I pay three or fourhundred dollars again I do not mindpaying for it even if it's a yearlysubscription to pay for it that is finethe developers need to be supported infact if it's a tool that it doesn't havedirect support method where I can justpay for it and some fashion uh if I haveyou know a GitHub project and you candonate to it I am likely to set up amonthly donation to the project to payfor it so that it stays around because I want it to stay aroundall right let's take a quick look atsome of the options so one of theoptions is clearly zotero so terror is aresearch assistant there is many videosout there Brian Jenks has some I've seenlots of stuff I'm already keeping trackof some of them on how to integratezotero and your obsidian library to dolike better citations I don't care asmuch about citations I'm not writinglike you know thesis papers or anythinglike that but it is great on theresearch sideum I've read in a forum post as wellthat I can sync it with next Cloud I canlike I can take care of my own sync Idon't need to do anything with zotero for that now again I don't know abouttheir payment models but I wouldactually be willing to pay for sync andnever use it and actually just sync withmy own thing just so that it staysaround so that we keep using it in factthat's a better way because I'm payingfor it and using another resources sozotero is one really strong option thatI'm going to be looking at again I'm notsure how it falls on the receipt side onsome of the tracking of you knowpersonal manual stuff like that butwe'll figure that as we dig into itanother tool is Joplin I looked atJoplin oh a number of months agoprobably in 2020 actuallyum and it wasn't terrible but the biggest thing that I found was that ithad a bad iPad application at the time Iwas very focused on using my iPadI'm less so now actually uh I like myiPad there are some things that it doesgreat I love it as a portable computerbut I'm just not sure it's definitelynot living up to the computer aspectthat I hoped it wouldumI'm yeah my laptop is new my Linuxlaptop is new I'm using a lot more thanmy iPad who will see if that reallyholds and I'll do a long term look atthat butthe iPad just isn't holding up so I'm not sure that I'm going to care as muchabout that I'm doing more research morereading more note-taking on my laptopthan I am on my iPad at this momentand doing some quick research you knoweven narrowed out my options I do noticethat Joplin is totally syncable withnext Cloud as well or you know variousother sources basically if I can createa shared folder I can have a sharedJoplin uh notebook with all my stuff soJoplin is one strong Contender for me tolook at as I'm looking at newnote-taking tools for you know for otherpeople's thoughts ask for a read itlater serviceanother interesting tool it'sinteresting a little kind of ugly to be honest isopenpaper.work so this is available forLinux and for WindowsI've seen some stuff that says you canprobably get it running on Mac althoughit looked like it was more Intel than M1it's right I have an arm-based M1machine right nowso I'm not sure on that respect that Ilove it butit's at least a possibility it does OCRyou can do OCR you can stick with nextCloud so it's at least one to look atalthough we'll see how far I go I reckonI really think that Joplin and zoteroare my biggest strongest contenders here and the final one I'll be looking at ispaperless ngx so this actually runs in aDocker container so basically runninglike a virtual machine on my system andI can do that on my Synology and then Ican get my documents in and out of therealthough I've you know I've worked withDocker Docker for all its ability to youknow everyone says it's so good it'seasy it's actually a pain in the buttonall the time there's a lot of timeswhere I'm like finding old bugs andstuff that haven't been fixed in years I'm like well it still doesn't work andyou got to find your work around andthere's a workaround that everyone'susing but there's no actual repair to itthis is probably the leastum likely one I'd look at but being aDocker container I can run on anythingit doesn't matter it's just kind of aview into a web browser into an app so Icould use it on anything uh easily andthere's also some Affiliated projectsthat work with it on iPad OS iOS stufflike thatso this is kind of the final one that Iwould look at as an option for myreplacement to Devin think now onecrucial thing as people look at new applications and I don't do this veryoften is that they take way too long toactually decide on an application sowhat am I going to do I'm going to takeprobably about a month to decide that'sit I'm going to give myself a coupleweeks so I'll give myself probably aweek or two with zotero I'll startsaving some articles into it actually atthe time probably save double they'llsave some into Devon think I'll savesome into zotero uh and then I willprobably do that with Joplin for alittle bit as well probably for a weekor two and then actually you know try towork through the research process I'llget the sync set up for both on my next Cloud servers and I'll do videos onthese as welland again I'll try it with uh open paperand I'll try it with paperless ngx andwe'll seeum now got to be honest if it'sdifficult to set up you know saypaperless ngx then I probably will stopand I probably just won't even botherit'll get off the list real quick I'mall for eliminating things really quickin this process because at the end ofthe month I have to have a decision andI'm gonna stick with it I'm not going tojust you know flop around and try sixother things the biggest thing thatpeople do is they spend so much time evaluating a tool and that they couldhave done so much work so much actualresearch actual work and actual pushingthe projects forward but instead theylooked for the perfect tool that wouldmake it oh so easy and there's not it'sjust not it though there is no PerfectTool out there Dev think has alimitation of cross-platform rightzotero honestly a little ugly uh Joplinagain the design not as nice but youknow people send GX runs in a Dockerserver like open paper.work hard to getrunning on an arm processor it lookslike so there's always gonna be limitations in any tool you useI'm just gonna accept that I'm gonnaaccept that and that's totally fine evenmy billing software that I use for myyou know my freelance job has issueswith it that I don't love about Harvestbut I haven't changed four years becauseit's just far better to keep using thatand keep you know working instead andthat's it if you have other suggestionsfeel free to put them in the comments ifI've missed something you think isreally good cross platform uh sync thatI can run on my ownum then by all means let me know what itis below and I would love to take a lookbut if it's not available on Linux don't even suggest itum because I'm not going to that's it ifyou like the video thumbs up below ifyou loved it subscribe hit the BellYouTube It's nonsense you know what itis comment tell your friends tell yourmom your mom sure your mom wants towatch this otherwise you can support thechannel to become a member Curtismchale.ca membership uh or take a courseChristmas kale.ca education members gomy courses included and many thanks toreflect app for sponsoring this video, Goodbye DEVONthink, Curtis McHale, 01gxtnkr6wgbfcanmba5f7z05q.