Any Known Alternatives to DEVONthink for Linux or Windows?

Posted by Chris Murtland
Jul 14, 2018 at 07:12 PM

The ability to apply metadata across diverse files and information types has always been the draw for me for database approaches like Ultra Recall. In UR, I can set up shared fields that are used on notes, PDF files, email messages, etc., and then use those fields in searches (and those saved searches are items like any other, with metadata also applied to them).

That said, the approach of something like Notebooks, which is entirely dependent on the filesystem, is also highly appealing to me. Not being locked in and being able to operate on the data using various other tools seems more sensible in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, tools based on the file system rarely provide any real metadata capabilities (at least on Windows), and therefore prevent much in the way of slicing and dicing.

I’ve never really resolved this tension to my satisfaction; wish I could have both. UR slightly wins out though, in that it can synchronize to external folders, so there is a possibility of getting the best of both worlds to some degree.

However, there is also a cost to maintaining fields/attributes/metadata on a lot of items. It pays off sometimes, but the file system approach seems to have less overhead.