DEVONthink vs Dnote
When comparing DEVONthink vs Dnote, the Slant community recommends DEVONthink for most people. In the question“What are the best knowledge base systems for personal use?” DEVONthink is ranked 25th while Dnote is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose DEVONthink is:
File types containing text are indexed.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can store any file type
File types containing text are indexed.
Pro Very flexible
An extensive feature set makes it easy to adapt to your work flow.
Pro Completely offline
Pro Sync
Sync between different macs and/or ios devices is fast, safe and easy. You can sync via iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or WiFi.
Pro Full text search
Pro Webpage Clipper
A flexible web clipper can add contents of any web page to DevonThink.
Pro One-time purchase vs monthly subscription.
Pro Paperless office functions available in PRO Office version
Includes processing of scanned documents, OCR etc.
The OCR function is based on FineReader and is probably the best one on the market.
Pro Local first
Supports local use first.
Pro Self-hostable
Because the software is fully open source, it can be self-hosted, if the users want to.
Pro Automated spaced repetition
It sends a weekly digest email for spaced repetition. Refreshes memory and helps learn faster.
Pro Minimal friction
Works as CLI, browser extension, and IDE plugins.
Pro Free and open source software
Free software under GPL license.
Pro End-to-end encrypted
Respects user's privacy with end-to-end encryption
Cons
Con Only runs on Macs, iPoneOS, iPadOS & Web
It does not run on Windows, Android, and Linux.
Con Stores in a proprietary format
It stores the whole database in a proprietary file package, that you cannot easily access from another app or from the Finder. Considering you might be classifying a huge quantity of files there, it is quite problematic if you want to interact with this data from other applications.
Con Very limited automation
While the marketing claims are about an intelligent document manager, it actually does not offer many automation features, such as automatic classification, tagging and renaming of the files. It's much more like an extended file explorer.
Con Costs US$79.95 for just the Personal version
One-time purchase instead of monthly subscription.
Con Non free/libre (proprietary)
Con Not mobile friendly
No Android app and site is not a PWA. Requires extra work to add notes.
Con No multimedia support
Because it is designed to be as minimalist as possible, it doesn't seem to have multimedia support yet.
