This video is a quick video overview of Devonthink pro office. Devonthink is a mac application that is available on OSX and IOS. It is a great alternative to. Learn how to import your Notebooks from Evernote directly into DEVONthink.

1. Devonthink Vs Evernote
2. Devonthink 和 Evernote 谁是更好的知识管理工具
3. Devonthink Import Evernote
4. Evernote To Devonthink

Rumours of Evernote’s demise come around ever so often, but the recent ones appear to have more to them than usual. It seems a bunch of senior staff are heading out the door. If privacy concerns, and proprietary database weren’t concern enough, the future of your data should be. I would be especially concerned for academic research. If you are looking for the alternatives to Evernote for Mac and iOS, I humbly submit a couple of options I have written about on this site, DEVONthink, and Notebooks. You may even find room in your workflow for both.

DEVONthink, the Power User’s Alternative to Evernote

I have written at length about DEVONthink for iOS, but DEVONthink’s real power still lies on the Mac. In fact, it is one of the remaining reasons I still use macOS. There are rumours of a major overhaul to DEVONthink on the Mac. I certainly hope to see those rumours come to fruition. For all its wonderful power, the interface has aged. Nonetheless, beneath that interface you will find the most powerful software available for information management and research. The AI heuristics and advanced search are some of the best study and research tools you will find in any form.

If aesthetic reasons have stopped you using DEVONthink in the past, I would urge you to download a trial and see if you can’t get over that. I wish had earlier than I did.

OCR and Web Clipping with DEVONthink

I know many users come to rely on Evernote’s OCR and web clipper. Both of those abilities can be found in DEVONthink. ¹ The OCR engine in DEVONthink Pro Office is as good as it gets. Between that, and the peerless AI engine you can see why DEVONthink has become the endpoint for all my research materials. The web clipper can clean a web page, and save multiple formats. It might be stripped back compared with the Evernote clipper, but it does an admirable job at capturing what you need. The best part is, it speaks Markdown.

As far as alternatives to Evernote go, DEVONthink is a significant upgrade. Not only is it smarter, but your data remains private and secure. Moreover, you have options for how you use DEVONthink. In short, where Evernote imperils your data, DEVONthink keeps it safe.

Migrating your data to DEVONthink is trivial, as it can connect to Evernote directly to pull everything across with a single click. What’s more, with the DEVONthink Education Discount you can buy DEVONthink Pro Office outright for the cost of one year of Evernote.

If you happen to be an iOS only user, DEVONthink to Go is also an excellent app. And, with the help of Workflow migrating you data on an iPad is not as difficult as many would have you believe. I have even setup some workflow shortcuts to help with the process. See my post on migrating Evernote data.

Notebooks: A Plain Text Alternative to Evernote

In many ways, Alfons Schmid’s Notebooks App is the antithesis of Evernote. It avoids all the pitfalls of a web based, proprietary system by building a stack on plain text. Not only is Notebooks a clever app, it is lean and your data remains future proof. If you want to avoid ever falling into the Evernote trap again, I would give this a serious look.

I recently did a deep dive on Notebooks, but I’m still uncovering some of its tricks. I have just started putting the ability to extract tasks automatically to good use. Notebooks can be set to extract tasks from a line in any note, by nominating a special character or phrase to indicate a line as a task. In practice, this means I don’t need to interrupt my own work when I have something to follow up. I have set Notebooks to extract tasks from any line that begins with two asterisk, so while writing I simply type a new line with ** followed by whatever I need to be reminded of. ² Like so,

** follow up on citations for Science of Logic

That’s it, I’m done. Notebooks will now extract the task from the text, and set a reminder. This is ingenious. It also opens up all kinds of possibilities with Siri Shortcuts, using Notebooks Siri integration.

Mac and iOS users have options for alternatives to Evernote. Apple’s own Notes app has developed into a solid solution. It has everything an everyday user might need, right down to document scanning and shared notes. I can also understand why Bear has become so popular, the interface is a delight. At the same time, both of those apps are built on a database that ultimately obscures the notes themselves. ³ With Notebooks, you can avoid that problem altogether, and you get an app that is much better suited to an academic workflow. For more on Notebooks, see links to my recent posts below.

Notebooks Coverage

Elements of a Note Taking and Research Workflow

If you’re wondering how these apps might work together, it is straightforward enough. I keep all my current notes and project materials in Notebooks, but archive everything in DEVONthink. DEVONthink can mange note taking well enough, but it doesn’t have the greatest interface for composing notes — or for writing in general.

On the other hand, something DEVONthink excels at is indexing data. This means you don’t need to store data in a DEVONthink database to make use of its intelligence. Instead, you can index any folder, anywhere on your Mac. Because Notebooks stores data in native file formats, which are accessible directly from the file system, DEVONthink and Notebooks are very compatible.

As Notebooks files are stored in the native file system, I can easily keep my notebooks indexed and make use of DEVONthink’s search super powers. This works well for the simple fact that both these apps work with the files system, instead of against it. Believe it or not, this means I can even use my old favourite plain text utility, nvALT, alongside both these apps. I will leave that workflow, however, for another time.

What about handwriting? On iOS, I use GoodNotes for handwritten notes. And like everything else, those notes pass through Notebooks and eventually end up archived in DEVONthink. While wither one of these apps is a wise investment, they play well together. Notebooks is available on the App Store for both macOS and iOS, and DEVONthink is available directly.

1. You will need the pro version for OCR ↩
2. You can set the task indicator to anything you like ↩
3. I’m talking about Notebooks. But yes, I understand DEVONthink keeps material in a database. It doesn’t have to though. ↩

As more businesses transition to go paperless, software applications like DEVONthink and Evernote become more popular than ever. These apps enable you to save important paperwork, sales receipts, and other documents neatly as digital files. These apps make it possible for businesses to manage files efficiently and to cut down operational costs. Among Mac and iOS users, DEVONthink has become very popular. This app is said to be a very good alternative to Evernote, which is currently the norm for note taking and document organization. So, how do DEVONthink vs Evernote compare? Which one is better?

Platform Compatibility
First and foremost, before we go any further into the discussion, we should know that DEVONthink is only available for macOS and iOS platforms. You can say that this is an exclusive tool for Apple users. So, if you also work on other platforms, you still need to find an alternative for those platforms. However, if you only work on your MacBook and iPhone, DEVONthink makes a viable choice.

On the other hand, Evernote is available for all major platforms. Of course, one of the primary advantages that Evernote offers is the smooth integration on multiple different platforms. So far, Evernote is available for Windows, macOS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Android, iOS, WebOS, BlackBerry, Google Wave, and even Symbian S60 5th Edition. If you want to be able to access your notes from different devices, Evernote makes the way to go. (See also : Evernote vs OneNote)

Data Storage and Security
The next radical difference between DEVONthink vs Evernote is regarding the ways they save your data. DEVONthink is installed on your computer, and it saves data on your hard drive. This is a great thing if you don’t feel comfortable about uploading your sensitive data to the cloud. You can say that this is relatively safer. However, you can also sync specific folders to the mobile app on your iPhone using Dropbox. DEVONthink ensures the security by deploying 256-bit encryption on the syncing process.

On the other hand, the Evernote clients are only for interfacing with the user and processing. Evernote stores data on the cloud. This way, you will be able to easily sync data across different devices. However, you will need an Internet access to retrieve the latest files, and it is more prone to attacks since the files are sent across the network. Some people don’t feel comfortable about storing their sensitive data on the cloud without some encryption.

User Experience
The next difference between DEVONthink vs Evernote that goes to DEVONthink’s favor is the user experience. DEVONthink is very customizable. Apparently, the developer understands that Evernote’s lack of customizability has annoyed some people. DEVONthink has taken an opposite approach by providing a wide array of interface settings and customizations.

Devonthink Vs Evernote

On the other hand, Evernote really lacks customizability. You can’t adjust the theme color or layout. On the good side, the interface is intuitive and easy to understand. The note opens on the right side of the screen. On the left, there is a column that lists shortcuts, notebooks, and tags, along with the list of notes in the selected notebook. You can add shortcuts of important notes and reminders simply by dragging and dropping into the “Shortcuts” section.

Nevertheless, so far, Evernote still has the best web clipper features available on the market. The web clipper features are very powerful and convenient. For example, you can install the Evernote Web Clipper extension on your Google Chrome. Simply click on its icon on the browser’s toolbar in order to save or collect web pages directly to your Evernote account for any purpose. You can also activate the extension by right clicking and choosing the context menu. From here, you can save the web page to use the text, links, or images later.

Devonthink 和 Evernote 谁是更好的知识管理工具

Scalability
DEVONthink has very scalable databases. In fact, many people prefer to use DEVONthink because it allows you to create as many databases as needed. You can create large databases without much of an issue. To help you navigate through the large databases, this app is equipped with a tag browser that is very handy for finding files. Just don’t forget to give the appropriate tags to each file whenever you import or add new files.

DEVONthink also has the ability to archive emails directly through the import function. It is compatible with Apple Mail, Microsoft Exchange, and other popular Unix-based apps such as Mozilla Thunderbird. This is a very nice feature that transforms DEVONthink into an all-in-one document hub.

On the other hand, one of Evernote’s major issues right now is the lack of scalability. It does not allow you to create databases like DEVONthink does. Of course, there is a tag browser as well, which helps you to find the files that you need from the document stacks.

Pricing
DEVONthink provides four options. You have to purchase the iOS app separately, and it costs $14.99. Meanwhile, the Mac app is available in three versions: Personal ($49.95), Pro ($79.95), and Pro Office ($149.95). These three versions vary by the features. The Personal version provides basic note taking and importing features. The Pro version adds the ability to create multiple databases and scripting support. The Pro Office version adds scanning and OCR, email archiving, and web sharing.

Evernote provides four subscription tiers: Basic, Plus, Premium, and Business. The Basic tier is free, and it already enables up to 60MB monthly file uploads, syncing for two devices, clipping, and OCR. The Plus tier costs $34.99 per year, and enables up to 1GB monthly file uploads, syncing for all devices, offline access, and email forwarding. The Premium tier costs $69.99 per year, enabling up to 10GB monthly file uploads, customer support via live chat, and the ability to scan and digitize business cards. Finally, the Business tier brings extended access control and security features, along with prioritized customer support.

Devonthink Import Evernote

Conclusion
DEVONthink vs Evernote have different pros and cons. In general, DEVONthink is more recommended if you work exclusively on Apple products, if you need scalable databases, and if you prefer to store sensitive data in the local hard drive. You can sync the mobile app by integrating DEVONthink with Dropbox. DEVONthink is safer because of the encryption. On the other hand, Evernote should be your choice if you need the ability to sync and access data from different platforms. Evernote stores data in the cloud. Evernote is very easy and convenient to use, even though the interface lacks customizability. The web clipper is great.

Evernote To Devonthink