The MacHumble Bundle sponsored by 9 to 5 Mac prompted me to buy four intresting apps this year, some new to me, with others being long-time wishlist occupants:
Filepane was the most unusual and interesting of the bunch, so I added it to the bundle. At its core, Filepane provides an alternative interface for moving files around on your Mac. When you start to drag a file in Finder, a small window pops up; dropping the file or files onto that window brings up a palette of actions you can choose.
Filepane moves files (and folders) from one location to another, but it also:
- attaches the file to a new email
- creates a zip archive of the file or files
- sets your wallpaper
- converts and edits images
- invokes macOS’s share sheet
- copies
- gathers files into a new folder
One key limitation of Filepane in my brief experience is that the action palette appears within pixels of the file or files you were attempting to move; Filepane’s interaction with files in the lower right-hand corner of your screen will be in that same corner. On larger displays, the action palette can be difficult to see. An option for a larger palette, and potentially one in the middle or top middle of the screen, would work better for me. (You can, however, drag an activated Filepane palette to wherever you like on your screen/
If you’re using Filepane to move files around (something as an avid user of ~/Desktop for active documents and project folders, which requires frequent attention to avoid Desktop clutter, I find tedious), the item file menu hierarchy exposed in when drilling down levels is small. It’s also entirely mouse-driven, which makes sense in that dragging a file is how you invoke the application. If you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard, though, Filepane isn’t for you.
I’m excited to try this out over a longer period of usage; whatever your final opinion of Filepane is, it is an intriguing reconsideration of a well-understood metaphor for organizaing your data. I still do a log of clicking and dragging, although my preferred way of moving files around these days is using Launchbar.