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Overview

A dual-pane file manager. The active pane is the Source; the other pane is the Destination. Copy and move always go from Source to Destination.

Open Help from Help → MacFolders Help, or press F1 / ⌘?. Every key, toolbar button, and menu command is in the Shortcut Guide below. In the app, Test Shortcut waits for a combination and jumps to that row if it is listed.

The window toolbar groups related buttons in capsules. It shows Icon and Text by default. Copy and Move point toward the Destination pane and flip when Source changes. Control-click the toolbar, Edit → Customize Toolbar…, or View → Customize Toolbar…, to show, hide, or rearrange groups. That layout is saved.

Search Parent Refresh Go New Folder Compare Hidden File List Swap Flip Bigger Smaller Open Edit Compare Files Preview Copy Move Rename Delete Pack Extract Help Shortcut Guide

Left: Search, then Folder, View, Panes, Size. Right: File, Transfer, Archive, Help. Copy and Move point toward Destination.

Panes

Click a pane (or its Source / Dest label) to make it the Source. Tab or the toolbar Flip button flips which pane is the Source; the file selector stays in the Source pane. Swap (View → Swap Panes, ⌘U) instead swaps the two pane folders, including their tabs.

File lists

Each pane lists files in a native Finder-style table with Name, Size, Date Modified, and Permissions by default. The list updates on its own when files appear, disappear, or change in that folder. Bigger / Smaller (or View → Bigger / Smaller / Actual Size, ⌘+ / ⌘- / ⌘0) change the list text; both panes share that size and it is saved. Control-click a column header (or View → Columns) to add Date Created, Date Added, Date Last Opened, Kind, and the rest. The Permissions column shows each file or folder's Unix permissions, e.g. rwxr-xr-x. New in 1.6.13, and populated for FTP/SFTP listings too as of 1.6.17. Click a header to sort. View → Refresh (⌘R) reloads every tab in both panes.

Path bar

Each pane has a native path bar. Click a folder or archive in the breadcrumb to go there. Click the path field to type or paste a path — as you type, matching local subfolders appear below it with the top match highlighted; Return fills in the highlighted match and keeps predicting its subfolders, or goes to the typed path if nothing is highlighted. Arrow keys move the highlight; Esc dismisses the predictions, and a second Esc restores the current folder path and leaves the field. New in 1.6.12.

To browse bookmarks instead, click the bookmark icon just before the path field, or press Go → Path Field (⌘L, ⌃L, or F12), which focuses the Source pane path field and opens its bookmark list. The bookmark icon works for either pane, not just Source. New in 1.6.12. The same list also shows your saved FTP/SFTP connections after the folder bookmarks — pick one to connect and open it in a new tab in that pane. New in 1.6.20.

Pane header buttons

• Choose Folder
• New Folder
• Open Terminal
• Embedded Terminal
• Open in Finder
• Bookmark
• Bookmarked

The folder icon chooses a folder or archive. The terminal icon opens Terminal.app in that pane’s folder (unavailable inside a zip or tar). The Finder icon opens that folder in Finder, or reveals the archive file if you are inside a zip or tar. The star bookmarks the current folder; a filled yellow star means it is already saved. Go → Go to Path… (⇧⌘G), Open Terminal (⌥⌘T), Open in Finder (⌥⌘F), and Bookmark Folder also apply to the Source pane.

The green terminal icon toggles an embedded terminal below that pane’s file list — a colored, interactive shell running in-app, without switching to Terminal.app. Drag the bar above it to resize; each pane remembers its own height and whether it is open. Go → Show Embedded Terminal (F11 or ⌃⌘T) toggles it for the Source pane. Unavailable inside a zip/tar archive. New in 1.6.4. A small toolbar above the embedded terminal always offers Clear Terminal; inside a git working tree it also offers Git Status, Fetch, Pull, Push, and Commit All… (stages every change and commits with a message you type). These run as real git commands in the pane’s own shell, using your actual git config and credentials. New in 1.6.11. The shell sends a cd to keep up whenever the pane's folder changes, rather than staying at the folder it was opened in. New in 1.6.25. On a remote FTP or SFTP tab, the same icon instead shows a live command/response log — every command sent and reply received on the connection, as it happens — with Clear, Copy All, and find-in-text/font-size controls. New in 1.6.16. SFTP has no plaintext wire protocol to show directly, so it logs one command per operation instead (CONNECT, LIST, MKD, RMD, DELE, RENAME, RETR/STOR, DISCONNECT). New in 1.6.30.

Remote (FTP/SFTP)

Connect to Server… (⌘K, or the network icon on a pane header) opens an FTP or SFTP connection and browses it like a local folder — drag files between a local and a remote pane to upload or download. Manage Connections… lists saved connections to reconnect, edit, or delete. Passwords and key passphrases are kept in the macOS Keychain; SFTP host keys are pinned the first time you connect. Compare, Find, and archive browsing are local-only and stay disabled on a remote pane. New in 1.6.

Folder tabs

Each pane has native folder tabs. File → New Tab (⌘T) or + opens another tab. Extra tabs can be closed (×, ⌘W, or Control-click); the last tab in a pane stays open. Tabs are saved and restored.

Backspace or Go → Parent Folder goes up one directory. Double-click a folder, a zip/tar archive, or .. to enter it. Double-click a file (or press Return) to open it with the default application. Click the name of a selected file or folder to rename it in the list, like Finder.

Hidden (⇧⌘.) shows or hides hidden files in both panes. Hidden names stay dimmed when shown. The toggle stays highlighted while they are shown.

Folder compare

Compare (⌃Y) checks the two selected folders by name. Identical items are green, missing items red, and same-name items with a different timestamp orange. Then Keep Source, Keep Destination, or Cancel, plus Keep newer (on by default). Those actions do not change Source or delete extras. Click Compare again or press Esc to turn it off.

Sync Browsing

Sync Browsing (⌃⇧Y, or the toolbar toggle next to Compare) is enabled only when both panes' current folders have the same name — the signal that they're comparable trees. Turning it on pins each pane's current folder as a root, then keeps both panes at the same relative subpath as you navigate either one — enter a subfolder on one side and the other follows, if a same-named folder exists there. Handy for comparing parallel project or backup trees. It turns itself off automatically if a pane moves outside its root, reaches a subpath the other side doesn't have, switches tabs, or the synced tab closes. New in 1.6.24. Either pane (or both) may now be a remote or cloud connection — FTP, SFTP, S3, WebDAV, or Dropbox — so it also mirrors navigation between a local folder and its remote backup, or between two remote trees. New in 1.6.27.

Cloud Providers

Add Cloud Provider… (or the network icon on a pane header) connects to a WebDAV, S3, or Dropbox account and browses it like a local folder, the same way Connect to Server… does for FTP/SFTP — drag files to upload or download, or rename, delete, and create folders remotely. Manage Cloud Providers… lists saved cloud connections to reconnect, edit, or delete. New in 1.6.21.

WebDAV and S3

WebDAV connects with a server endpoint URL, username, and password. S3 — and S3-compatible services such as MinIO, Backblaze B2, and DigitalOcean Spaces — connects with an access key ID, secret key, bucket, and region, plus an optional custom endpoint and path-style addressing toggle. Both keep their secret in the macOS Keychain, never in settings.json.

Dropbox

Dropbox connects with a personal access token instead of a full Dropbox sign-in. Sign in to the Dropbox App Console and create a Scoped access app (App folder or Full Dropbox), enable the files.metadata.read, files.content.read, and files.content.write permissions, then generate an access token on the app's Settings tab under OAuth 2 — Dropbox only shows it once. Paste that token into Access Token in Add Cloud Provider; Base Path is optional and defaults to the Dropbox root. The token is stored in the Keychain, and is removed automatically if you delete the saved connection. If Dropbox ever rejects the token (revoked, or the app deleted), edit the saved connection and paste a freshly generated one.

Git status

A pane browsing a git working tree shows its current branch as a badge next to the path field. A Git column (Control-click a column header, or View → Columns) shows each file's staged or modified state.

Preview gains a Show Diff toggle for a file with a git status: it shows what changed since the last commit instead of the plain file. The branch badge, Git column, and diff stay live as branches switch or changes are staged, without a manual reload. New in 1.6.8.

Items

Open and Edit

Open (Return or ⌃O) launches selected files with the default application. Open With lists other apps; Other… can save a default for that file kind. Always Open With… saves immediately.

Edit (F4 or ⌃E) opens with the default editor for that type. If macOS has none, MacFolders shows “No default editor was found.”

Compare Files (⌃D) compares one Source file with a file in Destination. After you start it, click a file in Destination, then Compare or Return. Choose… picks a file that is not listed.

Get Info

Control-click one or more files or folders and choose Get Info to open the real Finder Get Info window for them — the same window Finder itself shows. Not available inside an archive or on a remote (FTP/SFTP) pane, since it needs a real file on disk. New in 1.6.20.

Copy and move

Copy (F5 or ⌃C) and Move (F6 or ⌃M) queue the Source selection as a job in the Transfers window rather than blocking the app. Choose how it should handle a name that already exists at the destination — Overwrite All, Skip Existing, or Overwrite If Newer — before it runs. The toolbar icons point toward Destination and flip when Source changes. Copy into a ZIP adds those items. Copy into tar / tgz / tbz is refused. New in 1.6.22.

Transfers

Every copy, move, and delete queues as a job in the Transfers window (View → Show Transfers) — pause, resume, cancel, retry, or drag to reorder any job, or pause/resume the whole queue at once. Jobs persist across a relaunch and come back paused, so nothing runs until you resume it. A dropped connection pauses the affected job instead of failing files one by one, and resumes automatically once the network is back. SFTP, FTP, S3, and Dropbox transfers resume from where they stopped after an interruption instead of restarting; WebDAV downloads resume the same way, uploads restart. New in 1.6.22. S3, Dropbox, and WebDAV transfers are also checksum-verified after completion, catching a corrupted upload or download instead of trusting it silently; a mismatch is retried like any other failed file. A per-connection Verify checksums after transfer setting (default on) controls this from Add/Edit Cloud Provider. New in 1.6.25.

Drag and drop from Finder

Drag files or folders from Finder onto a pane to copy or move them into that folder. After the drop, choose Copy, Move, or Cancel. Drops into a ZIP work; drops onto tar or a read-only volume are refused.

Pack (F9 or ⌃A) creates a ZIP from the Source selection. Extract (F10 or ⌃U) unpacks selected zip/tar files into the Source folder.

Save file list

File List (⌃S) writes a CSV next to the selected folder (or the current Source folder). Named wildcards, content search, and Advanced filters match Find.

New folder, rename, delete

New Folder creates in the pane you click, or in Source via F7 / ⇧⌘N / ⌃K.

Delete (F8, ⌃X, or forward Delete) always asks first, then moves to Trash — or removes an entry inside a ZIP. Rename (F2 or ⌃N) edits the focused name in the list. Click the name of a selected file or folder to rename it the same way, like Finder. Return saves; Esc cancels.

Permissions

Control-click a file or folder, or Items → Permissions…, opens a popup with owner/group/other read, write, and execute checkboxes and an octal field, kept in sync. Works on a multi-selection; if the selection includes a folder, an Apply to enclosed items checkbox also changes everything inside it. Not available inside an archive or on a remote (FTP/SFTP) pane. New in 1.6.13.

Tags

A Tags column shows each item's Finder tags as a colored dot and name per tag, off by default like Kind and Permissions — turn it on from the column header menu. Control-click one or more files or folders for a Tags submenu: click any of the 7 standard colors, or an existing custom tag, to toggle it across the whole selection (checked when every selected item already has it, same as Finder), plus Add Tag… for a custom name and Remove All Tags. Custom tags show as a plain gray dot, since their true color lives in Finder's private tag registry. Not available inside an archive or on a remote (FTP/SFTP) pane. New in 1.6.19.

Comments

A Comments column shows each item's Finder comment, off by default like Kind and Permissions — turn it on from the column header menu. Control-click one or more files or folders for a Comment submenu: Set Comment… applies one across the whole selection, Clear Comment removes it. Not available inside an archive or on a remote (FTP/SFTP) pane. New in 1.6.26.

Type letters in a pane to jump to a name. Commands use Control so every letter stays free for that.

Bulk Delete & Rename

Control-click a folder and choose Bulk Delete… or Bulk Rename… to open a dedicated window that walks the whole folder tree and shows exactly which files match before anything happens. Local folders get the same filters as Find — name wildcards, size, date, attributes, and content search; FTP, SFTP, S3, WebDAV, and Dropbox connections get simple name wildcards instead.

Dry Run scans and fills the table without touching anything; review it, then Run… to actually delete or rename. Bulk Rename combines any number of rules — find/replace (text or regex), uppercase/lowercase/Title Case, add a prefix or suffix, sequential numbering with a custom start value and padding, and replacing the extension — with a live preview of every New Name and a warning on any name collision that blocks Run until it's resolved.

Both operations queue through the same engine as the Transfers window, so they can pause, resume, and survive an app relaunch mid-run just like copy and move. Local deletes go to Trash; deleting on a remote connection is permanent and asks for confirmation first, since there is no Trash there. New in 1.6.30.

Copy Template

Copy Template… (Items menu, or a pane's context menu next to Copy) copies the Source selection while skipping files and folders you exclude — by exact name (e.g. .git) or wildcard pattern (e.g. *.log; *.tmp), separated by semicolons.

Exclusion rules save as named, reusable templates — build one once from Manage Templates… and reuse it on future copies instead of retyping the rules. Dry Run walks the selection and previews exactly which files and folders will be copied versus excluded, without touching anything; an excluded folder is shown but not opened, since nothing inside it will be copied either. Works the same way copying into or out of a ZIP or TAR archive.

Apply queues the reviewed copy as a job in the Transfers window, same as a plain Copy — it pauses, resumes, and survives an app relaunch mid-run. Local folders only; a remote (FTP/SFTP/cloud) Source or Destination uses plain Copy instead. New in 1.6.39.

File Comparator

Shows text files side by side, including differences inside a line, or a hex view for binary files. Changed lines are amber, added lines green, removed lines red. Only differences hides matching lines. Previous / Next (⌘↑ / ⌘↓) jumps between differences. Esc closes the window.

Archives

Return or double-click on a zip, tar, tar.gz / tgz, or tar.bz2 / tbz file on disk enters it like a folder. The path bar shows the archive, then folders inside it. Backspace from the archive root goes to the folder that contains the archive file.

ZIP archives are writable: copy or move in, create folders, rename, and delete entries. Delete of a zip/tar file on disk still moves that file to Trash.

tar / tgz / tbz are extract-only. You can browse them and copy files out. Copy or move in, New Folder, Rename, or Delete inside them are refused.

Extract is unavailable while you are inside an archive; copy entries out instead. A zip or tar that exists only as an entry inside another archive stays a file.

The path bar shows an archive icon next to the pane badge whenever you are browsing inside a zip or tar file. New in 1.6.10.

Find

Find (Items → Find in Files…, toolbar Search, or ⌃F) opens a separate window. Look in starts as the Source pane folder. Named accepts wildcards such as *.swift or several masks separated by semicolons. Search all subdirectories is on by default. Search file content looks inside files for the Containing text, with HEX-mode, Whole words, Case sensitive, and Regular expression.

Advanced filters: Hidden, Read-only, Directory, Alias, Archive, size range, and modification date.

Select a result and Go to Source, or double-click / Return, to open that file’s folder in the Source pane. Esc stops a running search, or closes Find.

A Search inside archives (zip, tar) toggle also matches files inside any archive found during the search, by name or, with Search file content on, by their contents too — results behave like any other match, including Go to Source, Open, and Edit. New in 1.6.10.

Shortcuts.app Automation

MacFolders exposes Copy Files, Move Files, Create Archive, Extract Archive, and Find Files as actions in macOS's Shortcuts app — chain them with other apps' actions to build your own automations, or trigger them from Spotlight or Siri. Each action takes explicit files or folders as input (from a prior Shortcuts step, not whatever happens to be selected in MacFolders), so a shortcut runs the same way whether or not MacFolders is frontmost. New in 1.6.25.

Preview

A separate window. It stays closed at launch. Once it is open, selecting a file in the Source pane updates it. Position and size are remembered by default; a Remember window position toggle in Settings → Windows can turn that off, so it always opens centered over the main window instead. New in 1.6.19. The file’s name, size, date, and kind appear in the title bar, with its Finder icon and an Open button.

Source-code and config files (JSON, XML, YAML, and the rest) always preview as plain text. Extension-less names such as Makefile, Dockerfile, LICENSE, README, and dotfiles such as .gitignore are recognized by name.

Open it with F3, ⌃P, the toolbar Preview button, or Control-click → Preview on a single file. Preview of a file inside an archive extracts that entry first.

Files over 5MB show a banner instead of the usual text preview, with a button to open a new Large File Viewer window — the Preview toolbar or Control-click → Open in Large File Viewer also open it directly, for any file. It streams the file in pages instead of loading it whole, so paged navigation, jump-to-line, and find-in-file stay fast regardless of size. Oversized binary files get an Open with Default App / Reveal in Finder fallback for now. New in 1.6.26. A line-number gutter runs alongside the text; long lines scroll horizontally instead of wrapping, keeping the numbers aligned. New in 1.6.27.

Appearance

The Theme menu combines Appearance and color theme. Appearance: System (follow macOS), or force Light or Dark.

Theme: Native uses system colors. Paper, Sand, and Ice are light. Midnight, Forest, Ember, Commander (a Norton Commander–style blue, yellow, and cyan look), Retro (bright green-phosphor text on near-black, for a vintage 80s terminal look, new in 1.6.23), and Xcode (Apple's own Default (Dark) Xcode colors, new in 1.6.18) are dark. Choosing a light or dark theme also switches Appearance to match. Folder-list text size is independent of theme.

Windows disks

macOS mounts Windows NTFS disks read-only. A pane on such a disk shows a Read-only badge. Copy from that disk still works. Copy onto it, move, new folder, rename, and delete need a writable remount.

Hasleo NTFS for Mac can remount the disk so every app can write. If macOS already mounted the disk, Eject then Mount from the Hasleo menu. Having Hasleo running is not enough while the system mount stays read-only.

Also add MacFolders, Hasleo NTFS for Mac, and HasleoNTFS4MacService in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.

Settings

Last folders and folder tabs, bookmarks, Open With choices, window positions, toolbar, list columns, text size, hidden-file visibility, file-list CSV options, which side is Source, theme, appearance, and each pane's embedded terminal (shown or hidden, and its height) are saved to ~/Library/Application Support/MacFolders/settings.json.

A Settings window (⌘,) edits the display and window-layout parts of this directly, in three tabs — General (appearance, theme), File List (columns, text size), and Windows (Preview's remember-position toggle) — each with its own Reset to Defaults button, plus one button to reset all three at once. Bookmarks, saved connections, Open With choices, and open tabs are untouched by every reset. New in 1.6.19.

Full Disk Access

Xcode debug builds do not appear automatically in System Settings. Use File → Install to Applications Folder…, then Full Disk Access, and add MacFolders from Applications.

About

MacFolders is developed by Christos Christodoulidis, wcmCloud.com. See also Contact.

Update check

MacFolders checks macfolders.com for a newer version on startup and every few hours. When one is available, Update available appears on the bar above the function keys; click it to open the Releases page. New in 1.6.1. File → Check for Updates… checks right away and reports whether you are up to date. New in 1.6.3.

Feedback

Click Feedback on that same bar to report a bug or request a feature without leaving the app. Enter the email you used to download MacFolders, a title, and a description; the form requires that email to already have a download on record. New in 1.6.32. The same sheet has a heart-shaped Like button, gated on the same registered email — tap it as many times as you like, with repeat taps batched into a single request and a running total shown beside it. New in 1.6.36. Whichever email you last used for either is remembered and fills back in automatically. New in 1.6.37.

Shortcut Guide

Every key, click, and menu command. On a Mac keyboard, hold fn with the F-keys unless System Settings → Keyboard uses F1, F2, etc. as standard function keys.

In the app, Test Shortcut waits for a combination and jumps to that row if it is listed.