Is there really no open source file indexer / tagger / system like DevonThink?
Discussion
Loading...
Post
@Daojoan recently I learned about Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) from https://lambdaland.org/posts/2025-10-03_reading_papers/ but did not try it yet.
I had a similar dilemma when trying to replace Palm Desktop after a dozen years of using it - and it just quit working - and trying to find an all-in-one fit was a major frustration, and it still hasn't truly been replaced.
I did a little more digging and came across something called TagSpaces & kinda close to DevonThink, but it does have a tiered subscription model to get the advanced options... although it's still touted as 'open source'.
@Daojoan if you are looking for a document indexing tool with good search capability, then you might want to try Recoll (recoll.org). I doubt it supports tags.
@Daojoan
Do you want it for misc local files or for long term document storage? Paperless-ngx is great for the latter. No idea about the former.
I doubt if they're all direct replacements, but there's a list of 157 alternatives as a starting point...
@lumiworx Yeah I've been through the list. Joplin and Obsidian are note takers, as are most of the apps on the list. DevonThink is doc and file management, search, storage and research
@Daojoan on windows 'everything' is very good. But it's not a tagger though. Just better search
https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
(I don't understand how it can be that much better than native windows - but it is)
@andreasio working on my list of tools to use to leap to Linux and devonthink is definitely up there. Might go the Sivers route and go back to plain text in folders again.
@Daojoan @andreasio take a look at recoll.
@BlaynePuklich @andreasio this looks very interesting
@Daojoan @andreasio what are your other must have tools?
@petersibley @andreasio not that many, tbh. I keep most of my writing in plain text or markdown, so that's easy. I'm a big OmniFocus user, but if I make the leap, Everdo or Super Productivity or I might just white knuckle a text file for todos.
@Daojoan I've seen personal knowledge management systems be set up to kind of do that but there really isn't an equivalent to DevonThink
bonfire.cafe
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
Automatic federation enabled