App to Manage Documents DB

by Rian

Back in 2000s, when I got my hands on Intel Mac for the first time, there were two things that immediately caught my attention: Spotlight, the functioning search tool on OS, and DevonThink, the highly regarded documents management software beloved by many Mac users. Some even called DevonThink to be the savior of Macintosh lineage — otherwise there would be no space left for OS X.

My experience with DevonThink largely remained the same since. I don’t think new features particularly changed my workflow. What did change, however, is DevonThink’s pricing model. For a license for 2 Macs, with one year of update, the software starts at $99. It’s a great software, only that I can’t quite bite the bullet when I already know what I will get hasn’t seen significant changes for nearly two decades.

Paperless-ngx is an open source, freely available documents manager. I would recommend installing it on NAS or Pi, any system that will be a home server. I’ve had mine installed via Docker container, and so far I am getting the features I want. I can search through PDFs; I can put random documents in without worrying about losing it; I can tag them for future references, and so on. The only thing possibly missing I could think of, though I’ve always preferred other editors, is the Markdown editor.

Paperless-ngx is not the only project out there specialized in documents management. It’s just so happened that it came highly recommended I’ve seen some people run some havoc digitizing their paper trails, but there are options out there if you are willing to find one. This one, in particular, happens to focus on what many would consider cold storage. As I understand it, these projects are often light enough to run on most single-board computers, such as Raspberry Pi. It never hurts to check out other options, but for my purpose of storing old projects, references, bills, and etc., it fits.