Hello fellow CRIMPers,

Something I'm struggling with recently is which "bucket app" to use, whether it's worth it to use multiple bucket apps for separate areas of my life and whether I want a super-powered full-featured app (i.e. DTPO) or something lighter, but with less mental overhead (Keep-It or EagleFiler).

What are people on this forum currently using to satisfy their bucket app needs? Why are you using a specific app?

If you are using DTPO, are you frustrated by the seeming lack of recent development of the Mac app? Do you expect that to change? If you use Keep-It instead of DTPO, why?

Just looking for some friendly, unbiased discussion.

Thanks!

An pretty darn good info bucket is TheBrain. It is so easy to drag almost anything into the plex to save it in the database. Yes, it is best if you have a place for it -- a parent "thought" -- but that isn't necessary right away, as you can drag things into an "In Box" thought and organize later. You can categorize the contents of a "Brain," with tags (as many tags per thought as you want), and types (one type per thought). And the search function of TheBrain is surprisingly robust. With it you can root out most any information in your brain.

With a full subscription (not cheap, but not terrible if you use TheBrain extensively), you can have TheBrain on a Windows PC, Mac, and iPad, and keep them all in sync -- version 9 works much better than the previous visions.

If you're not all that familiar with TheBrain, the tutorials on this page will give you a good idea of how it works:

https://thebrain.com/support/tutorials

TheBrain isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I wanted to put it out there for your consideration, because it usually isn't top of mind when people think of an information bucket.

Steve Z.

I'm not a fan of the "bucket app" idea. We all have a terrific "bucket app" by default -- the file system. I'd suggest the problem should be approached from the needs perspective -- what are your requirements?

Do you need something to organize files for projects or for research?
Do you need to organize your personal financial or other records?
Do you need a tool to compare files, or find commonalities, or suggest groups of files?
Do you need services to capture content on the fly -- book marks, clipping or snippets, downloads?
Do you need to compose text and have a place to manage changes?
Do you need to collaborate?
Do you need your documents on multiple platforms (laptop, cloud, iPad/iPhone)?

And so on. Then it's a matter of scoring your requirements high-to-low and laying them out against the tables of features that all the developers in this category. And then download and try them by throwing real-world (your real world) problems at them.

The cost is not in the software. The cost is in the hours you spend with the software trying to make it work for you. If you don't know what you want to accomplish to begin with, odds are you'll buy the wrong thing because some guy on the internet told you what they like.

(Personally, I like DEVONthink and dislike Eagle Filer and Keep It. And I'm bored of all of them and wish there were better options. But I've also learned to use the filesystem better and depend less on "bucket" (ugh) software to do my work.)

I would like to like DevonThink, but I still have fits trying to use it on multiple computers. Eaglefiler, to me, seems more like a place to collect PDF files. And it doesn't appear to have had any new features for years. I haven't used (or heard of) Keep-It. Right now, my bucket is Evernote.

I had been asking the same question for the last couple of days.

Generally, Devonthink is more potent than EagleFiler. Unless you are up to the price, I see no reason to choose eagleFiler over Devonthink.

(I compared EAgleFiler with Devonthink years ago: didn't check back to EF recent: so, I could have an old info--apologies for that)

For me, the choice is between Devonthink and Keepit.
(and, also Tinderbox and Scrivener): note that Scrivener can do many of the things Devonthink and KeepIt can do especially using the Folder syncing feature. TB can also do much more; except the transparent syncing to Finder)

Devonthink is clearly more powerful thank Keepit. I personally find some nuggets that make KeepIt more valuable for writing notes than Devonthink.

1) The Compact Mood: this mood makes KI capable of floating over other applicants. This is a very useful feature to take notes while reading pdf file.
2) True transparency: Devonthink can index. But, the notes you create in Devonthink are always stored in the database. There is no way of storing your note when jotting with the Sorter. KeepIt, on the other hand, directly stores the note in RTF format on any of the selected Finder folders. This is an extremely useful feature because jotting in KeepIt live syncs with the Scrivener or any other tool that can use the Finder.

3) Markdown support is also better: but, personally, I don't care about this because I am an RTF guy.


I find the true transparency of KI very useful. I am using KeepIt more often than Devonthink.

Unfortunately, I am still not able to completely eliminate Devonthink. One reason, I already have a license. Second reason: I use it to sync to Evernote for reading my clippings offline. I also use it to push some of my notes to and from Tinderbox.

But, I am not going to buy the next release, especially if they are not going to fix the flawed Proximity search. For now, I occasionally open it. I am moving towards KeepIt.
(I am also considering to eliminate Tinderbox from my workflow; Tinderbox's XML is has been a pain for searching the database with-outside tools such as Spotlight and Foxtrot. Tinderbox is a sort island. )

Apart from regular note taking, the main advantage of Devonthink is for storing and searching PDF files.
The reason I want to eliminate Devonthink is because I am using Foxtrot for the same purpose.

I find the Searchin in Devonthink less powerful than Foxtrot. I completely rely on Foxtrot for the searching PDF files. There is no point in indexing these files in Devonthink for me. The proximity search I often use (>80% of my search) is useless in Devonthink. Foxtrot does great here.

But, Foxtrot has also a problem: the developers are suckers. They are updating the software every other year and ask the user to pay a hectic price for a new license. Developers of Devonthink is very generous for the license. We have been using Version 2 for ages without paying a penny.

Paul Korm wrote:

The cost is not in the software. The cost is in the hours you spend
with the software trying to make it work for you. If you don't know
what you want to accomplish to begin with, odds are you'll buy the wrong
thing because some guy on the internet told you what they like.

So painfully true.

(Personally, I like DEVONthink and dislike Eagle Filer and Keep It.
And I'm bored of all of them and wish there were better options. But
I've also learned to use the filesystem better and depend less on
"bucket" (ugh) software to do my work.)

I use DEVONthink the most and I couldn't really live without it. I'm an attorney with both a litigation and transactional practice in a paperless office and I would go insane without DTPO. The problem is that DTPO's "flagship" feature (the Magic Hat) has never really worked for me. Meaning I'm left with an out-of-date looking app that will *hopefully* be updated soon (at least DTTG 2 is coming along well).

I basically own a license for every app mentioned (except TheBrain--tried it, but didn't like it), so it's less about cost and more about what works. Thanks for the input, discussion always helps!

Dellu wrote:

I had been asking the same question for the last couple of days.

Generally, Devonthink is more potent than EagleFiler. Unless you are up
to the price, I see no reason to choose eagleFiler over Devonthink.

DevonThink does more but its UI is a comparative mess, and you have to live inside it with no ability for Spotlight to index files (although I believe Spotlight *does* works in the iOS app). I used Devonthink for many years, starting with DevonNote, then Devonthink, then Devonthink Pro. But the quirks and unfixed bugs (specific ones which I reported and finally got fixed two years after I stopped using the app) made it unpleasant to continue using.

If I needed all the features - especially unique ones like OCR - I'd still be using it. But I don't. I switched to EagleFiler, and all my files remain on my drive in folders and are referenced in the app, so Spotlight works fine. And I recently started using it to archive my tens of thousands of saved emails, thus allowing me to stop using the powerful but extremely unMaclike MailSteward app.

I've recently been using it with my web browsers in conjunction with some of the provided bookmarklets that will save bookmarks or pages in pdf, Rich Text or Safari web archive formats.

https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/bookmarklets

I just find it a cleaner, more attractive, and somewhat faster experience overall. And the owner and main dev Michael Tsai usually responds quickly to questions in the forum, which is head and shoulders above trying to contact Devon Technologies about anything.

https://c-command.com/forums/forumdisplay.php/7-EagleFiler

With EagleFiler you can freely edit shared text files on either device as well as create new ones, and syncing with Dropbox/iCloud (though renaming/deleting outside the Mac can cause EagleFiler to lose track of the files). For multiple Mac or Mac/iOS access see:

https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-put-my-librar
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-access-my-lib

There's a free trial, so I'd recommend checking it out and comparing it to Devonthink. But because there's no iOS app, I'd lean back towards Devonthink if I needed full text/image/pdf access on iOS devices.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

I would like to like DevonThink, but I still have fits trying to use it
on multiple computers. Eaglefiler, to me, seems more like a place to
collect PDF files. And it doesn't appear to have had any new features
for years. I haven't used (or heard of) Keep-It. Right now, my bucket is
Evernote.

Keep It ($49) is the replacement for Together. It's competing with Devonthink Personal ($49) and EagleFiler ($40) but also apps with similar UI and features like Findings ($49), Growly Notes (just $4.99!), the awesome Mac/iOS notebooksapp.com ($18.99/$6.99) from Alfons Schmid, And probably more I'll kick myself for not remembering.

I use EagleFiler. Funny that you mention PDFs, since with both EagleFiler and Devonthink I had separate libraries just for archiving/readin PDF magazines. But 99% of the time I use the apps to import text/webpage/rich text documents, using the app as my shoebox repository. When on the go in iOS that's what I use Apple's Notes app for, but EagleFiler works better for me for long-term storage, tagging and searching. (Though I generally hate tags.)

Oh, and I just noticed now that notebooksapp.com has a compatible version for Windows too, which can share documents with iOS (specifically not mentioning Mac, however):

https://www.notebooksapp.com/pc/

satis wrote:

DevonThink does more but its UI is a comparative mess,

This is certainly my main complaint...really my *only* complaint.

and you have to live inside it with no ability for Spotlight to index files (although I
believe Spotlight *does* works in the iOS app).

This is no longer true. Databases can be set to create Spotlight indices now.

I used Devonthink for
many years, starting with DevonNote, then Devonthink, then Devonthink
Pro. But the quirks and unfixed bugs (specific ones which I reported and
finally got fixed two years after I stopped using the app) made it
unpleasant to continue using.

If I needed all the features - especially unique ones like OCR - I'd
still be using it. But I don't. I switched to EagleFiler, and all my
files remain on my drive in folders and are referenced in the app, so
Spotlight works fine. And I recently started using it to archive my tens
of thousands of saved emails, thus allowing me to stop using the
powerful but extremely unMaclike MailSteward app.

I've recently been using it with my web browsers in conjunction with
some of the provided bookmarklets that will save bookmarks or pages in
pdf, Rich Text or Safari web archive formats.

https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/bookmarklets

I just find it a cleaner, more attractive, and somewhat faster
experience overall. And the owner and main dev Michael Tsai usually
responds quickly to questions in the forum, which is head and shoulders
above trying to contact Devon Technologies about anything.

https://c-command.com/forums/forumdisplay.php/7-EagleFiler

With EagleFiler you can freely edit shared text files on either device
as well as create new ones, and syncing with Dropbox/iCloud (though
renaming/deleting outside the Mac can cause EagleFiler to lose track of
the files). For multiple Mac or Mac/iOS access see:

https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-put-my-librar
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-access-my-lib

There's a free trial, so I'd recommend checking it out and comparing it
to Devonthink. But because there's no iOS app, I'd lean back towards
Devonthink if I needed full text/image/pdf access on iOS devices.

EagleFiler is interesting too, I'm trying it out now.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

Right now, my bucket is Evernote.

Same here. I should add that it's been so for the last 9 years, with more than 25,000 notes. It's an amazing relief to not need to think where I should note an interesting piece of information, regardless of what device I have available.

satis wrote:

Keep It ($49) is the replacement for Together.

What bothers me with Keep It is that there is only one repository now. With Together there could be many. I would like to separate private an business.

I would recommend Notebooks like a shot, if the desktop versions weren't so much less powerful than the iOS version. Alfons has been working on a new version for a long time now, but news has become a trickle. I might have to harass him!

DEVONthink is awesome, but I couldn't use it for everyday bucket listing - it's just too cumbersome.

I find myself using KeepIt more and more, as it becomes increasingly stable (and multi-featured); the developer is impressively committed. And the always-on-top compact view is awesome!

I tried to love EagleFiler for years, but somehow it never quite did it for me. But it's not bad.

Having rejected DayOne (after making years of journal entries), I've just invested in Mariner Software's MacJournal. Which is actually very impressive, with a very wide range of features at a very modest price. It could easily be used as a bucket-list app, in that it accepts attachments, recordings, links, tags, hierarchies of journals/sub-journals, ebooks and all kinds of other stuff - and has useful timeline and calendar views as well. Having said that, I'm still in the early stages of blast-testing it, so I won't give it my ultimate five-star recommendation until I'm convinced it does everything it says it does.

Cheers,
Bill

DevonThink Pro Office is my "bucket". I've tried several of its rivals, including several mentioned in the posts above, but always found that DT is better for my purposes. I like its reliability, its ability to handle easily (in my case) tens of thousands of files in (in my case) 32 databases, and the seriousness of purpose of its developers. And, incidentally, development hasn't stopped.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I would recommend Notebooks like a shot, if the desktop versions weren't
so much less powerful than the iOS version. Alfons has been working on a
new version for a long time now, but news has become a trickle. I might
have to harass him!

I just saw a recent Tweet from him that Notebooks 2.0 for macOS is due out *this summer*. I already decided to try out Notebooks--very impressive. I'm somewhat confused at the lack of Tagging though...seems like that would be a no-brainer.

DEVONthink is awesome, but I couldn't use it for everyday bucket listing
- it's just too cumbersome.

That's been the nagging feeling I've been having about it, even though I use it every day.

I find myself using KeepIt more and more, as it becomes increasingly
stable (and multi-featured); the developer is impressively committed.
And the always-on-top compact view is awesome!

Yep. Trying out Keep-It slowly and this is interesting. I wish it had a quick entry universal hot key, but hey, that's what Keyboard Maestro is for, right?

I tried to love EagleFiler for years, but somehow it never quite did it
for me. But it's not bad.

Just feels outdated to me.

Having rejected DayOne (after making years of journal entries), I've
just invested in Mariner Software's MacJournal. Which is actually very
impressive, with a very wide range of features at a very modest price.
It could easily be used as a bucket-list app, in that it accepts
attachments, recordings, links, tags, hierarchies of
journals/sub-journals, ebooks and all kinds of other stuff - and has
useful timeline and calendar views as well. Having said that, I'm still
in the early stages of blast-testing it, so I won't give it my ultimate
five-star recommendation until I'm convinced it does everything it says
it does.

Just downloaded the trial of MacJournal. I'm curious, but like others, hope I don't get too attached right away without assurances that it will continue to be updated!

Cheers,
Bill

Thanks!

I kinda agree with Paul Korm.
Use default file generating options when possible, only because it limits the work into taxonomy and curation of anything "special" within the native filesystem.
To that end my bucket is the browser 'downloads' folder. hazel is trained to keep everything there fresh, until well, unfresh. And then my preference is to sort by file extension. I use DTPO to index a good few folders of these extensions. my devonthink bases are large enough now that I use foxtrot search in the filesystem, and sometimes ammonite if I need to search the breadth of both devonthink and the remaining sorted files.

god knows I wish there were better support for the mac tagging interface for all of this. suggestions welcome!

living inside devonthink or keepit or et al seems to become painful if they are used as the dump/bucket/scratchpad. just my opinion that they excel at focussed work rather than the catchall.

bigspud wrote:

I kinda agree with Paul Korm.
Use default file generating options when possible, only because it
limits the work into taxonomy and curation of anything "special" within
the native filesystem.
To that end my bucket is the browser 'downloads' folder. hazel is
trained to keep everything there fresh, until well, unfresh. And then my
preference is to sort by file extension. I use DTPO to index a good few
folders of these extensions. my devonthink bases are large enough now
that I use foxtrot search in the filesystem, and sometimes ammonite if I
need to search the breadth of both devonthink and the remaining sorted
files.

god knows I wish there were better support for the mac tagging interface
for all of this. suggestions welcome!

living inside devonthink or keepit or et al seems to become painful if
they are used as the dump/bucket/scratchpad. just my opinion that they
excel at focussed work rather than the catchall.

I tend to use Indexing with DTPO and it works great. The one problem is when I forget to "move to external folder" and find myself wondering where a file is and realizing it's simply stuck inside DTPO. Not a huge deal since I'm on a Mac or iPad full time and DTTG2 works incredibly well, but there you go.

After all my CRIMPing the last few days, the two new apps I'm interested most in are Outlinely and Notebooks. Keep-It remains an ongoing experiment, but perhaps (as you suggest) for a focused use or two. Otherwise, I remain happy with my DTPO workflow and despite the focus on DTTG over the last year, DTPO *is* in active development.

JakeBernsteinWA wrote:

After all my CRIMPing the last few days, the two new apps I'm interested
most in are Outlinely and Notebooks. Keep-It remains an ongoing
experiment, but perhaps (as you suggest) for a focused use or two.
Otherwise, I remain happy with my DTPO workflow and despite the focus on
DTTG over the last year, DTPO *is* in active development.

Davon Technologies are a vital Mac/iOS resource, and they have good products, and they update frequently. But they are SO stubborn about what they want to offer, and how, and when, and their customer support is gawdawful. The tipping point for me was a few years back: I used the app standalone and hated having that pop-out sorter stuck to the side of the screen, so I'd always turn it off in Preferences. But every time DTP updated, it would *ignore* my stated preferences and reset the sorter to launch on restart. I contacted Devon about this numerous times, for a couple of years, and they never fixed it. I got disgusted with having to remember to go into Prefs and re-set my actual preferences every time the app updated, and, added with the UI wonkiness I migrated from DPT to EagleFiler.

(And then Devon fixed that particular bug... without noting it in any of the release notes.)

###

When I first encountered Outlinely I was intrigued to see a desktop clone of Workflowy, and I considered trying it. But the secretive, unrevealed dev(s)/owner of Glam Development did absolutely nothing with the app for the last year until the v. 2.7.8 update last month (mysteriously jumping from May 2017's v 2.7.2) to merely add multilevel numbering and pdf output options.

And pricing seems off to me. When the Mac app came out in 2014 it cost $4.99 and now it's $39.99, and the free iOS app requires a $14.99/year in-app subscription to get iCloud sync and search(!). To use it on both platforms would cost $55 the 1st year and $15/year after that. That only makes it competitive with Workflowy/Checkvist after two years, and also puts it in OmniOutliner territory, whose Mac/iOS Pro unlock and sync costs $80 total, with no additional charges.

Having criticised EagleFiler, I've recently rediscovered its benefits.

I'm trying, as mentioned before, to compress down the number of apps I use to manage my vast store of general information, which comprises web pages saved out as PDF files.

At the same time, I'm trying to move away from all-in-one and proprietary databases towards tools that manage individual files (so no user tie-in).

Hence my excitement at rediscovering FoxTrot Pro.

I've used Curiota, which is good, but imposes its own structure on folders/files. I've been trying to use Notebooks, which would be excellent, except for its PDF-handling limitations (mentioned already elsewhere).

So I dug out my EagleFiler licence again and downloaded the latest version. And discovered that it's more flexible than I remember. Also, it has one unique feature: a setting that allows you to specify that it should save web pages out as a single long PDF page (so not automatically convert them into A4-sized printable pages, which is what everybody else does).

It took me a little experimenting to find out how to do this (it's actually ridiculously easy using the one-press import key, which is F1 by default). If you use the context menu's "Save PDF to EagleFiler" option, you get A4 pages again - which is sometimes useful, but not my preferred approach).

The other thing I hadn't fully taken on board is that you can set up an EagleFiler library more or less anywhere. It's basically the same thing as a FoxTrot index. You have to manually initiate a rescan to get it to index files added through Finder or other file management tools, but that's scarcely a hardship.

So it's back on my list of Very Useful Info Management Tools.

Cheers,
Bill

Although I own Notebooks for Mac and iOS, and despite desiring a cross-platform solution, I'm still relying on EagleFiler on my Mac, which I've used for 3-4 years as a DEVONthink replacement. It's just a very solid, clear, useful app that's regularly updated and supported.

I've now moved to Foxtrot Pro as my Devonthink replacement. My collect all bucket is now Finder using Hazel to file files not modified in 5 weeks into an Archive folder by Year > Quarter. This is then indexed by Foxtrot. I don't need this information on iOS and where I occasionally do, it is simple enough to find the files in foxtrot and copy them to iCloud drive and delete when they are no longer necessary.

I'm not grasping how Foxtrot is a DEVONthink replacement. Foxtrot is discovery (seach, etc.) on steroids for whatever is in the target volume indexed by Foxtrot. DEVONthink is limited to whatever is in the currently open database. Beyond that, the feature set of DEVONthink is not much congruent with Foxtrot's.

Simon wrote:

I've now moved to Foxtrot Pro as my Devonthink replacement.

Paul Korm wrote:

I'm not grasping how Foxtrot is a DEVONthink replacement.

I think it is dependent on how I used Devonthink. Devonthink is a database. It stores files and allows you to create new ones as well as see the information in different ways. Foxtrot is not in itself a database, although it does create one of your indexed location. My database is my Finder folder that is indexed by Foxtrot. I store my files in a Finder folder and Foxtrot indexes them. This is pretty much what my use of Devonthink was. I threw all my files into Devonthink and essentially used it as a repository of all my data that was searchable. I appreciate that not everyone uses it in that fashion. But for me this is how Finder+Foxtrot Pro replaces Devonthink in my use case scenario.

Apologies, if this is not how you use Devonthink at all.

Yes, I'm using FoxTrot Pro (and now EagleFiler) in the same way as Simon.

The "database" is the folder of files etc., which is indexed by FoxTrot/EagleFiler. EagleFiler also allows you to make notes directly, which FoxTrot doesn't (of course). But FoxTrot can be set to update its indices on a regular basis (by default, every night), and has ridiculously powerful search options. So while it doesn't have the concordance function of DEVONthink, you can come pretty close!

To my astonishment, I'm now thinking about uninstalling DEVONthink Pro Office, or maybe using it exclusively as an e-mail backup solution. Wow!