Workspaces in DEVONthink 3 and more!

DEVONthink 3 “workspaces” let historians snap a set of frequently used documents back into view instantly—turning multi-file context switching into a one-click workflow. The practical payoff is speed and continuity: when writing a story and needing to jump to another project midstream, a workspace restores the exact document set (including the right side-by-side layout) so the work can resume without hunting through the database.

The walkthrough centers on a common research rhythm. A historian may toggle among dozens of documents in DEVONthink during a normal day. But when writing—such as drafting a narrative tied to specific sources—there’s often a moment when the writing session must pause for a new deadline. Instead of manually reopening the same files again and again, the user creates a workspace that bundles the relevant documents. In the example, two documents are positioned together for reading and annotation; then a workspace is created from that selection. Later, switching projects becomes a matter of choosing the workspace, and the chosen documents reappear immediately.

Workspaces are built to be lightweight and iterative. The user can add a workspace name, update it when needed, and remove documents from a workspace once they’re no longer part of the active task. Keyboard shortcuts also streamline the process, reducing the number of clicks required to move between document sets.

The session also ties workspaces to DEVONthink’s annotation workflow. Documents can be annotated with “super annotations,” and those annotated materials can then be incorporated into the final writing workflow. The emphasis is on keeping the research-to-writing pipeline tight: annotate in DEVONthink, then use workspaces to manage which annotated sources are currently in play.

Beyond the feature demo, the conversation highlights why these systems matter over time. One participant describes finding long-lost grad school notes and archival document photocopies in a box years later—discovering that searchable OCR text and a well-organized database would have made it easier to locate relevant passages by name or place. That moment becomes a cautionary tale: without a reliable workflow, important materials can end up buried, forcing future panic or redundant work.

The result is a broader argument for historians using DEVONthink not just as a storage vault, but as an active research workspace. Workspaces complement other writing tools—like moving drafts to word processors or using reference managers for citation generation—by ensuring the right sources are always one step away. In short: bundle the documents that belong together, switch contexts fast, and preserve research continuity so deadlines don’t erase momentum.