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Appendix

Application Icon   Hidden preferences

There are a few settings in DEVONthink that you cannot set through the Preferences window. Most of them are intended to facilitate customer support but they might be interesting for you as well.

Note: These hidden preferences are not an official feature and could be changed or removed with any update.

How to access the hidden preferences

All hidden preferences are simple on/off switches. You set and unset them using the "defaults" command in the Terminal or using the special ON and OFF links provided below. To set preferences via the Terminal DEVONthink must not be running or it will overwrite your changes when you close it.

To set a preference using the Terminal, noting the commands are case-senstive, they are written like this:

Terminal:

$ defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3 ShouldScaleAttachedImages -bool TRUE

The above command activates the preference with the key "ShouldScaleAttachedImages". Change TRUE to FALSE to deactivate it. Use any of the preferences keys below to activate or deactivate them.

There is a special preference to allow DEVONthink to detect other plain text formats as plain text: "AdditionalPlainTextExtensions". As it replaces the list of additional plain text extensions we recommend that you read the current list first (empty by default) before adding your own to the end of the list.

Terminal:

$ defaults read com.devon-technologies.think3 AdditionalPlainTextExtensions

2014-07-31 08:25:27.101 defaults[21950:3312262] The domain/default pair of (/Users/eb/Library/Preferences/com.devon-technologies.think3 AdditionalPlainTextExtensions) does not exist

# This "error" shows there are no additional formats specified.

$ defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3 AdditionalPlainTextExtensions -string .otl.todotxt

$ defaults read com.devon-technologies.think3 AdditionalPlainTextExtensions

.otl.todotxt

Available hidden preferences keys

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    AdditionalPlainTextExtensions: Adds additional plain text extensions, separated by dots.
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    AdditionalXMLExtensions: Adds additional XML file name extensions, separated by dots.
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    BatesNumberDigits: Specifies the number of digits used for the placeholder.
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    CounterDigits: Specifies the number of digits used for the placeholder.
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    DisableActivityWindow: Disables automatically showing/hiding of the Activity window. On | Off
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    DisableAutomaticDeconsolidation: Inhibits items added to indexed groups in DEVONthink from automatically moving out to the indexed Finder folder. On | Off
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    DisableAutomaticUpdatingOfIndexedItems: Disables automatic updating of indexed items. On | Off
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    DisableBadgeLabel: Disable the badge label on DEVONthink's Dock icon. On | Off
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    DisableFileSystemEvents: DEVONthink no longer listens to file system events. On | Off
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    DisableFileCoordination: DEVONthink no longer uses file coordination, registering its interest in certain files and waiting for replies. This can cause very long delays if the coordinating process isn't responding quickly. On | Off
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    DisableFinderTags: DEVONthink no longer imports or exports Finder tags. On | Off
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    DisplayGroupsInPreviewPane: DEVONthink will display the contents of selected groups, smart groups, and feeds in the view/edit pane of main windows. The preview only displays files, not groups. On | Off
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    DisableHighlightColorMapping: Uses the same colors when highlighting documents in dark and light mode. On | Off
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    DisablePreprocessedClipping: Disable additional processing of a web page's content before sending the clipped file to DEVONthink. On | Off
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    DisableTagAutocompletion: Disable displaying the popup of tag suggestions when entering tags, e.g., in the Tags bar. On | Off
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    DontAutomaticallyEnableOperatorsOptionOfSearchInspector: After a toolbar search, this disables automatically enabling the Operators & Wildcards option in the Search inspector. On | Off
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    EnableApplicationFiles: Applications can be imported/indexed. On | Off
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    EnableAutomaticConsolidation: Indexed items moved to a non-indexed location in the database will be moved from their Finder location as an imported item. On | Off
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    EnableEvernoteRTFDImport: Enable this to import notes from Evernote notebooks as rich text files. On | Off
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    EnablePDFDrawing: Enables DEVONthink's own drawing of PDF pages. This was a workaround for macOS Sierra and is incompatible to macOS High Sierra. On | Off
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    ForceEditablePDFs: Some PDFs contain objects that are problematic for Apple's PDFKit. DEVONthink opens these files in a read-only state. Enable this option to disable this behavior and open all PDFs as editable. Note: This does not eliminate the potential for problems with certain PDFs. On | Off
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    IndexRawMarkdownSource: Index the source code of Markdown files instead of the rendered content only. On | Off
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    MaximumNumberOfRecentSearches: Specify the number of recent searches available in the toolbar search field or the Search inspector. The default value is 10.
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    MonospacedSidebarFont: Use a monospaced system font in the sidebars of main windows. On | Off
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    MonospacedViewFont: Use a monospaced system font in the item list of main windows. On | Off
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    PersistentSortingOfSearchResults: Retains the last sort method used in database search results. On | Off
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    PlainTextIsMarkdown: Treat all plain text files as markdown. On | Off
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    RawMarkdownPasting: When pasting rich content into a Markdown file, the formatting is converted to Markdown. Enable this to ignore formatting and paste as raw plain text. On | Off
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    RichNotesWithoutAttachments: Services create RTF instead of RTFD. On | Off
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    ShowAdditionalInfoInPathBar: Shows some details about the selected item in the Information Bar. On | Off
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    SyncDebugLog: Enable additional sync logging for debugging. On | Off
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    WindowToolbarStyleExpanded: Enable the expanded toolbar style on macOS Big Sur. This shows the title bar above the toolbar instead of the new unified default style. On | Off