DEVONthink and privacy

One thing I really love about DEVONthink, alongside others, is its security and privacy measures regarding the synchronization of notes across different devices. Among a variety of cloud options such as Dropbox, iCloud, or CloudMe, and custom solutions via WebDAV or local sync stores, you can choose to sync via macOS’ Bonjour service, which pipes the entire sync process through your local (and hopefully well protected) network.

The cover image for this post was created with DALL·E 2 (Sourceꜛ)

Thus, you can sync your databases across devices without using any cloud service. And if you want to avoid using any cloud or network solution at all, you can even sync DEVONthink To Go on your iPhone or iPad directly via a USB cable connection with the DEVONthink desktop app. For all sync options, a strong AES-256 encryption is offered. This makes the management of your database across devices feel even more private and protected, as you don’t have to handover any personal data to third parties just for synchronization reasons.

Both methods, synching via the Bonjour service and the cable connection, work reliably and with ease. I’m using it for almost three years now. Among all note taking apps that I’ve used so far, both on iOS and Android, there wasn’t any other app that would have provided such high privacy and security standards. This makes DEVONthink, by far, very unique among all available note taking apps in my opinion.

The sync settings panel in the DEVONthink desktop app.

The help entry and description of DEVONthink’s Bonjour sync option.