In 2017, I wrote a practical guide to keeping a journal, which also contained a digitalizing part involving Evernote. Since then, a few things happened that ultimately made me close my Evernote account for good, and resort to other methods I’d like to explain here.
Why I Quit Evernote
Question for when importing evernote notes into devonthink. I would like so much to know if internal links linking evernote notes are also imported. How could I find them all and reconvert in devonthink link. Posted by 19 hours ago. ICloud Index/import. Devonthink Pro vs Evernote vs Keep It. I am a mainline pastor-theologian (Presbyterian) who is trying to decide on a program to store/ORGANIZE my digital papers. I average 50+ of these docs each week. (All my notes are stored in the Archive in plain text.) I want to organize these papers. To use, highlight the Evernote items you want to move into DEVONthink and run this script file. The 'User Switches' at the beginning of the script allow you to customize the way it works. Take a look to familiarize yourself with the options I've put in for you! FastScripts Keyboard Shortcuts (Optional).
1. Privacy and Security
Evernote DEVONThink; Platform: Cross platform: Mac and iOS only: Groups: Notebooks can be stored in a single group (Evernote calls them stacks), but they cannot be nested in multiple levels: Notebooks can be stored in groups, and groups can be nested.Notes can also be replicated and stored in multiple folders. EG I have a single list of items I.
The primary reason to quit Evernote was taking back control of my own data. I don’t want to throw my whole life on “the cloud” anymore - even if it’s encrypted at rest on Google Cloud servers - to which I do not have any key, by the way. Nectar 3 mac download. Oh, andEvernote employees can read your notes? I’ve also heard stories of disappearing notes. Although that never happened here, it’s kind of scary.
So, I purposely looked for a decentralized solution that does not force me to store my very personal data somewhere else besides on my own hardware. With DEVONthink, you can still sync between multiple devices using Dropbox, with client-side encryption. Making backups is a simple matter of zipping a single directory, and doing whatever the hell I want with it. The note database can also be encrypted, although I simply rely on FileVault’s disk encryption instead.
2. Functionality
DEVONthink has so many bells and whistles that it is impossible for me to list them here. Take a look at the official website. Of course, if you’re a minimalist, that can also be a bad thing. Luckily, most features are discrete and the main UI is clean and can be customized to your liking. A few things I particularly liked, compared to the Evernote OSX application:
- Proper Markdown support, custom CSS, WikiLinks, …
- Smart AI that suggests related notes.
- A scriptable interface using AppleScript (not great, but it works)
- Smart Rules that lets you auto-tag, move, rename, …
3. Speed
DEVONthik is blazingly fast on my M1 MacBook Air. It literally takes a single second to boot, while the Electron-based Evernote app takes its sweet time. By then, I’m over the “quickly, jot that down or I’ll lose it!' pattern. Okay, that’s a lie, I only take notes in my analog journal, but still.
Disatvantages of DEVON Tech.
- It’s expensive. True, but it’s a one-time cost, not a yearly one! With Evernote increasing its prices to
$7
a month, after two years you’ve almost covered the Pro edition. However, what I actually like about the price is that it forces me to actually make use of it. After all, I paid quite a bit of money (at once) on a single product. Better make the most of it, then! - You’re limited to Mac tech. Also true. Although I don’t mind, I do wish I had an iPhone right now, because DEVONthink To Go is not available for Android, and that does sting. Avoiding vendor lock-in is important, especially as you want your note-taking system to last preferably your entire life. Export options are plenty, and notes are simply files in folders.
Migrating from Evernote to DEVONthink
My Evernote journal stack was easily exported into a weird
.enex
format that turned out to contain a simple XML structure. A few parsing gists helped me cook up a script to automatically import this data into DEVONthink. Yes, there’s a Import menu, but it requires Evernote to be installed, and by then, my account as already closed.The DEVON community helped with tips on importing and image importing, and I ended up with a Python script that combines AppleScript (using appscript, which is deprecated and “unsupported”, but still works on Big Sur) to command DEVONthink and raw python to parse the XML structure:
In order to pass the URL, the Base64-encoded image data from the
.enex
export is first copied to a local file. The full gist code is available here.How to Digitize Hand-written Journals
![Devonthink Devonthink](/uploads/1/3/4/7/134761615/218929220.jpg)
1. Scanning
Since the Android Evernote scanner app - which worked quite well, to be honest - isn’t an option for me anymore, I needed to find another way to efficiently digitize my stuff. After reading Mark Koester’s guide on digitalizing journals with a scanner app, I decided to give Genius Scan a try. Others I’ve tried are Adobe Scan (requires login, nope!) and Smart Doc Scanner (too clumsy to quickly scan multiple pages).
Scanning an entire journal (240 pages) took
20
min. However, the app only managed to identify and properly cut the pages about 30%
of the time, and regularly rotates scans even though I don’t want that. I do like writing with a lot of colors, pasting pieces of cut-out papers and images in-between. Samarium cobalt. That might have confused it. Furthermore, the quality of the scans themselves isn’t great (even after selecting the “Highest” image quality), compared to the scans made by the Evernote app. I’m not sure whether I can recommend it, but it’s the best of the worst. I tried both scanning single pages and two pages at once (by opening up the journal) and the latter worked much better.Although Genius Scan quickly lets you create a single PDF document for each journal, I don’t want a single file: I want separate files for each page to tag in DEVONthink. No problem: after transferring the PDF to your workstation, use ImageMagick:
convert -density 150 journal.pdf -quality 90 journal.jpg
creates journal-i.jpg
for each page (48
s for 248 pages on the Apple M1 - 300
dpi creates blown-up 4
MB files that I don’t need). Then, simply drag these into DEVONthink after creating a new group for the journal and the painful tagging process can begin…As for note names, I used the pattern
#XPYYY
where X
was the journal index and YYY
was the page number. A very handy feature of DEVONthink is the Automatic WikiLinks one that creates linkks to journal pages if you mention them in a note. This does not work if a note starts with a hashtag. I converted these using the Script - Rename - Rename using RegEx menu. Do not rename them on disk: this will corrupt your note DB. I simply replaced #
with b
(for “book”). I’ve seen others use a timestamp in their filename, but that makes linking even more difficult.2. Tagging
Fast tagging is an art. With DEVONtink and a bit of shortcut trickery, you’ll do just fine. Select a scanned picture. Click on “Tags” on the right and add some. Press Enter. Use
CTRL+TAB
and DOWN
to quickly go to the next. If you didn’t touch your trackpad, just click again to re-enter the next set of tags. I usually browse through the same physical journal in case I feel like re-reading or the scanned image is a bit blurry. This process takes about 1.5
hrs per journal. A few more tips:- If you’re obsessed about structure: DEVONthink supports hierarchical tags.
- Don’t overdo it. I used to tag way too much, or use too fine-grained things. If you, like me, use tags primarily to quickly find stuff, be mindful of the name and amount.
3. Other metadata
With Evernote, I used to annotate each individual note with the correct date as appearing on the physical paper. I stopped doing that because it takes too much time, and it is irrelevant: either the date stamp, positioned in a corner, is also scanned, or I can deduce the period by simply looking at the Location: each group is labeled as follows:
Where
XX
is a simple serial number and both dates denote the beginning and ending period of that particular notebook. If, for some reason, that still isn’t enough, I simply locate the physical copy and look at that one instead. For me, the digital versions are never meant to replace the originals: they are merely there as a backup and a quick way to find notes.If that is not enough for you, DEVONthink offers the ability to add custom metadata fields.
So I’m a DEVONthinker now. What’s next?
Customize your setup. Browse through online DEVONthink productivity tips. Read Stefan Imhoff’s Zettelkasten Note-taking Method with DEVONthink. I’m far from a note-taking ninja myself, and it’s very inspiring to read how others tackle this. As he put it:
Putting notes into folders is the beginners’ approach.
![Evernote Evernote](/uploads/1/3/4/7/134761615/196417249.jpg)
The Zettelkasten method basically equals to the practice of non-linear note-taking:
- You take notes. Good, but not great.
- You also tag notes. Better, as it groups them into clusters, but still not great.
- You create links between tags/notes. Congrats, you’re zettlekast-ing!
Remember, digitizing your journal is only the beginning. So we’re officially a note-taking newbie now. On to level 2!
Over the years, I’ve discovered one thing that almost all of my clients have had in common: They have too much paper in their lives and they desperately want to get rid of as much of it as possible!
People are searching for a workable “Digital File Cabinet” solution. Paper, emails, items clipped from websites — these days, they all need to be in the same place when you look for them (and preferably with the same feeling of solidity that you get from sticking something in a drawer).
Devonthink Vs Evernote
Going paperless certainly isn’t without its own pitfalls, but few things are more professionally satisfying to me than seeing a palpable look of relief on people’s faces as we shrink their clutter down to the size of a disk drive.
Right now for Mac users, two of my favorite programs to help tame piles of paper are Evernote and DEVONthink Pro.
Evernote Vs. DEVONthink Pro
Evernote is a fantastic program (a platform, really) to collect and access your information from almost any type of device — and from anywhere that you can get an internet connection. Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry — you name it, and Evernote probably has a client for it.1
The software and basic service are free, but the more advanced features require you to pay for a subscription. The free offering is quite good, but with its premium service restricting users to 1GB/month of uploading, it isn’t necessarily the best solution for people who have a mountain of paper to digitize.
In contrast, DEVONthink Pro excels at making sense of a really big pile of paper. Not only can it scan in and index an amount of paper limited only by your hard drive space, but DEVONthink will allow you to organize your files in hierarchical folders (something Evernote has a slightly different approach to with “Stacks”). It also has a sophisticated relational database which helps to uncover connections between documents that you might not necessarily find yourself. Add in a long history of developing great products for the Mac community and you’ve got yourself a deep, powerful program written to take full advantage of the Apple framework.
In some very specific cases, I’ve actually used both together with fantastic results. For these people (often Academics and Authors), I generally think of Evernote as short-term memory and DEVONthink Pro as long-term memory: They can scoop up bits of information wherever they are with Evernote and then bring them into DEVONthink Pro to take advantage of things like keyword extraction and automatic grouping.
Devonthink 3 Vs Evernote
Moving Between Evernote and DEVONthink Pro
Most apps these days allow you to import and export things easily, but keeping your metadata intact — the tags, the dates, etc. — is still often a challenge! People are often afraid to try a new note-taking/organizer program out of fear that, if they don’t like it, they’ll have to start all over and reproduce their work to organize their data when they move it into something else.
Evernote and DEVONthink don’t share their metadata automatically, but I’ve written two AppleScripts which allow you to move large numbers of items seamlessly between them — and which preserves as much of that valuable metadata as possible!
The AppleScripts
One script moves items from Evernote to DEVONthink, while the other moves items from DEVONthink to Evernote.
You should always begin cautiously at first to understand how each script works before moving large amounts of your files around. I use these scripts myself and feel very comfortable with using them, but I cannot accept any responsibility for any data misadventure you might suffer (e.g., Use at your own risk!). I’d suggest starting with a file or two until you get the hang of things.
I hope these scripts make things easier for you and that they help you try and find the right note-taking program for you. Enjoy!
- There’s even an open source Linux Port! [↩]