Kinkless Desktop 4: Capture and access easily

How do you get your Smart Folder to save without the ‘.savedSearch’ extension? I’ve never been able to get rid of that, even if I go to the info and hide the extension. Is there a setting somewhere I should change?

Hi Ethan, great post. I was wondering: if you use DevonThink to capture things you come across, what do you use Yojimbo for?

Along the same lines as your desktop simplification, after a few years of using my Mac at work I became distressed at the number of icons in my Doc. So I enacted a plan similar to your Desktop simplification. Here’s the general steps involved.

1 - Remove all the icons from the left-of-separator side of the dock except for those apps that you immediately launch every single time you login (for me, that amounts to (a) Finder, (b) Eamcs, (c) Terminal, and (d) Safari). If you actually use Dashboard, you can consider keeping that icon on the Dock. I don’t.

2 - in your personal Application directory, create a series of Folders to organize your applications as you see fit. Prettify these folder icons as you see fit. Here’s my list of folders: Adobe CS, Games, Graphics, iApps, MediaApps, OmniApps, Reference, Utilities, Web, Writing.

3 - to the right-of-separator side of the dock you will now add Application folder icons; open a Finder window with your Applications folder (and one with the computer’s shared Application folder), and drag the folders one by one over to the right-side-of-separator side of the dock. (From the shared Applications folder, I dragged my MS Office folder, and the shared Applications folder itself.) Rearrange those icons on the dock into an order that makes sense for you.

4 - Keep those Finder windows open; now, from your shared Applications folder, populate the various folders in your personal Apps directory with aliases/links to the various shared Applications (command-option drag). Feel free to put links to Apps in more than one “category” (for example, I have a link to OmniWeb in both OmniApps and Web, a link to iTunes in both iApps and MediaApps).

5 - When you need an application, right click the containing folder on the dock to see its contents and then select the app you want. When the app runs, it shows up in the left-of-separator side of the dock.

6 - Put your dock on the left side of your display. Your vertical screen space is more valuable than your horizontal screen space, because there’s less of it (this is especially true if you have a widesceen aspect-ratio display).

Advantages: - Only the apps that are actually running appear on the left-of-separator side of the dock. - The dock sizes to be only as wide as it needs to be, as more and more apps run. Apps that aren’t running are filed away in the “folders” on the right-of-separator side of the dock. - All files in a folder on the doc are visible with a right click, not just the apps (so you can dig through your MS Office folder to find what you want). - If you keep your doc aligned vertically, your running apps are on top, and your filed apps are beneath — this makes logical sense (to me, anyway). - If you want to add a new app to one of your “personal folders”, single click it on the doc - this opens the folder, then you can put a new alias in it quickly.

Caveats: - Your “running apps” show up, top to bottom, in this order: ones that reside on that side of the dock first, then new icons in the order they run. If you move an icon around IT IMPLIES A KEEP ON DOCK POLICY. You can easily just drag the icon off the dock later, but this is a mild annoyance until you get used to the notion that you don’t want to reorg the running apps list (there’s really no need to, since the organisation comes from their containing “personal folders” down below).

Hope others will find this useful.

This series is FANTASTIC, thanks very much for it. One other downloading preference I set up is in Mail, for attachments. Apparently Mail keeps a special folder for this somewhere in the bowels of the system, but you can re-set it to download attachments to your Inbox. That way, you doubleclick on an attachment right in the message window, and it automatically drops it in your inbox. No more dragging the file onto the desktop, or clicking Save As.

Ethan,

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This series has significantly changed my life! Along with a recently implemented GTD system, the organization you’ve proposed here has me feeling clear and focused.

Quick question for you: I noticed you’re using Yojimbo and DevonThink. I’ve been evaluating both of these programs, and trying to choose one - but it appears you’re using both. I’m just wondering how you use them together? I love the simplicity and GUI of Yojimbo, but the lack of nested folders is killing me.

Thanks for your help.

Chris

I second that. How are you using Yojimbo alongside DevonThink? Inquiring minds want to know!

“I will definitely be expanding on this answer in a full article, but essentially: Yojimbo is my “moleskine” and DEVONThink pro is my “Research Notebook”. More on that later!”

Another request for one of your great screencasts on how you use Yojimbo and DEVONThink Pro. I have been playing around with both but I’m not sure how to use them effectively. Yojimbo is great but it doesn’t support nested folders. DEVONThink looks very powerful but does not support tags (from what I gather). I would love to see how you use them Ethan.