DEVONthink3 - Our Top 3 Features

DEVONthink 3’s biggest upgrade is a redesigned “single-window” workspace that keeps a document and its annotations in view at the same time, eliminating the constant switching that used to slow historians down. In DEVONthink Pro Office, users often had to juggle separate windows—one for the document and another for annotations, or multiple windows when comparing documents. DEVONthink 3 shifts that workflow by placing an annotation pane in the inspector area on the right sidebar, letting researchers read and annotate without toggling between views. The result is a more streamlined research loop: open a document in the main center pane, capture or review annotations in the sidebar pane, and only open separate panes when a deeper look is needed.

The second standout feature is a new “quick” capture tool accessible from the top menu bar—designed for grabbing notes, tags, and reminders without leaving whatever task is already running. From a phone call or a moment of inspiration, users can jot something down and route it directly into DEVONthink’s database structure. It also supports media capture, including video and audio, and includes web clipping as a core use case. The web clipper can capture an entire page, save a URL, or clip just a portion of a page. It can also work via drag-and-drop or screen capture, and it offers a screenshot option when clipping from the screen rather than the web.

What makes the quick capture tool especially useful is that it can mirror DEVONthink’s organization inside the capture workflow. It surfaces the database hierarchy and groups, so items can be placed correctly immediately—without opening DEVONthink’s main interface. That tight integration aims to reduce friction between “finding” and “filing,” a common pain point for researchers who collect sources throughout the day.

The third feature is the Concordance Inspector, a more research-focused analysis tool located in the same inspector panel area as document metadata and annotations. It pulls every word from a document and ranks them by frequency, helping users spot patterns in language. That can support historians’ interpretive work—for example, identifying charged or repetitive terms that suggest tone, or surfacing themes that may not have been obvious at first glance. The transcript frames this as a way to generate new questions: word frequency can reveal what a document emphasizes, which in turn can challenge assumptions and guide what to search for next.

Taken together, these three features—single-window document-and-annotation viewing, fast capture and web clipping from the system menu, and concordance-based language analysis—are positioned as practical tools for day-to-day historical research. The conversation also notes that a public beta recently ended, and that some users may run DEVONthink 3 alongside Pro Office during the transition, switching between databases as needed.