DEVONsave v3

Published Mar 15, 2021

• Shortcuts
• DEVONthink
• Automation
• Reading

1. Get the DEVONsave: Article to HTML for DT using DTTG shortcuts shortcut

2. Get the 📥 DEVONsave by type shortcut

3. Get the 📥 DEVONsave v3 shortcut

My original DEVONsave shortcut, based on Federico Viticci’s 2017 work, helped users create clean, customizable exports of articles on iOS. Those exports would then be converted to PDF via a desktop automation using DEVONthink 3.

However, because the shortcut depended on opening URL schemes to do its work, it was a little clunky. In DEVONthink To Go 3, released yesterday, DEVONtechnologies enabled parameterized Shortcuts. This means that DEVONsave can operate a little more cleanly than before. So, use the buttons above to download the shortcuts and capture away.

The “shortcut” is now actually three interlinked shortcuts.

The inner-most shortcut—the first one above—takes an article or webpage and reorganizes its content, applying custom page styling to make the eventual PDF nice to read on small screens.

The second layer takes in a variety of different input types. If it’s an article, it passes it to the aforementioned Article to HTML shortcut. If not, it captures the item as e.g., a bookmark or markdown text, as appropriate.

It also provides a mechanism for handling different destinations. When you add the shortcut, you can add additional common destination groups as name-UUID pairs. When you run the shortcut, it’ll let you choose where to send the item.

This is the shortcut you’ll actually run. It takes one or more inputs, runs each through 📥 DEVONsave by type, and returns with a list of the created items so you can jump straight to them. Or, the “Return to App” option simply exits the shortcut.

Download the three shortcuts in the appropriate order from the buttons above. When you want to capture content using this shortcut, open the Share Sheet and choose “📥 DEVONsave v3.”

This will create a clean HTML capture of the article you shared. To get DEVONthink to automatically convert this file to a PDF (with—gasp!—working links), see the instructions in the previous post on DEVONsave.

Some users have reported an error running 📥 DEVONsave v3: it says it that 📥 DEVONsave by Type doesn’t exist. If you encounter this error, please go to each of the two Run Shortcut actions and re-select the 📥 DEVONsave by Type shortcut. Thanks to @JKoopmans for the workaround.