Devonthink 4 is out (versioning, AI document access, new automation features, etc.)

[laptopllama]

Some highlights from the announcement blog post:

Our new generation of DEVONthink is more modern, smarter, and comes with countless new features — from support for generative AI models to versioning and audit-proof databases. We’ve also improved the text editors, created new automation capabilities, completely rewritten the web interface, redesigned the Help viewer, and much more.

Integrate your preferred generative AI model into DEVONthink 4. Have texts summarized in chat, get tags assigned, or interactively ’talk to your documents‘. Search using natural language or incorporate AI actions into your automations. With image generation, create relevant visuals for your materials directly within the program. DEVONthink supports online models such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Mistral AI as well as locally installed models via engines such as Ollama or LM Studio. You decide whether and how you want to use them. AI remains a private matter.

When you edit documents, DEVONthink 4 automatically keeps older versions of your documents, so you can return to them at any time. Audit-proof databases prevent documents from being edited and log deletions. They are the perfect place to store financial documents or other materials with special requirements.

Search even more effectively; DEVONthink now finds PDF documents even without prior OCR. Explore the connections between your documents in the new interactive Graph inspector and integrate AI actions into your automations, using new actions, triggers, and placeholders. Save frequently used batch processing workflows to quickly reuse them at any time.

There is a new license model to be aware of.

 

[auxbuss]

Shame they've moved to annual subscriptions – albeit the product will keep working thereafter. I evaluated v3, and, knowing v4 was coming, held off. This is a significant increase in cost over the lifetime of the product – and no doubt worthwhile for power-users – but far too expensive for my use-case.

Off the top of my head, I think three years would be fair – assuming continuing development.

 

[svenmany]

I will upgrade after a while. I don't mind the subscription model, but one year also feels a bit short for an initial release.

If I understand how they'll handle it, the particular subscription model has the flaw in that you are forced to pay for bug fixes, not just enhancements. Since it's a new release, which will have growing pains, I'll wait a bit to get more coverage from that first year.

But, I couldn't live without the product and I'm looking forward to some of the new features. And, I respect their developers and support people. I'm happy to support them.

 

[Sital]

I'm a happy, but basic, user of DEVONthink Pro 3. Not sure if an upgrade would be useful for me, as I just use it basically to store documents for going paperless. I'm not sure what the AI functions would be useful for.

 

[berb]

I just use it basically to store documents for going paperless.

I'm in the same boat. I moved to Devonthink from Evernote.