Make it yours

Mac integration

PaneShift is a Mac app, not a port. It works with the system's previews, tags, iCloud, sharing, automation and on-device intelligence.

Quick Look and Quick View§

⌘Y opens Quick Look for the item under the cursor. ⌃Q shows a live preview in the other panel. See Viewing and editing.

Photos in Quick View use Live Text: drag over text in the picture to select and copy it, or press and hold the subject to lift it out and drag it into another app. Copy Text above the picture copies all of its text (for PDFs, their text), and Save Without Background writes the subject alone as name (no background).png next to the photo. Both run on your Mac; nothing is uploaded.

For many files at once, Tools › Remove Background saves the cut-out subjects of the marked photos into the other panel's folder, and Tools › Copy Text from Images puts the text of the marked images and PDFs on the clipboard. The first use after a restart takes a few seconds while macOS loads the recognition model.

Global shortcut§

⌃⌥⌘Space brings PaneShift forward from any app, and pressed again while PaneShift is in front, hides it. When the Finder is in front, the active panel opens the folder of the Finder's front window (Direct edition; macOS asks once whether PaneShift may ask the Finder). Change or turn off the shortcut in Settings › General, where you can also have the window drop down from the top of the screen, like a terminal's quake mode. The default avoids ⌃⌥Space, which macOS uses to switch input sources. If another app holds the shortcut, Settings › General says so.

Folder rules§

Rules, as in Hazel, tidy a folder on their own: Settings › Rules says what to do with the items that turn up in a folder such as Downloads. A rule has conditions (name or extension by mask, contains or regular expression; kind such as image, PDF, archive or disk image; size; how long ago it was added, modified or created; a Finder tag; the address it was downloaded from; the camera, and whether a photo has a date taken or a location) and actions done in order: move or copy into a folder, rename, add or remove a tag, move to the Trash, unpack an archive, notify, and in the Direct edition run a shell script with the item's path as $1.

Folder paths and new names take Multi-Rename masks, so ~/Pictures/[EXIF:date:yyyy]/[EXIF:date:MM] sorts photos by the month they were taken and [Y]-[M]-[D] [N] puts the date in front of a name. Relative paths start in the rule's folder; missing folders are made, and a name already taken gets a number (name 2.pdf), so nothing is replaced.

Preview… lists what the rule would do now before you turn it on, and Run Now runs it once. Changing what a rule does turns it off, so a half-typed mask never runs; turn it on again when it is ready. A copy into the rule's own folder is refused, and a destination folder inside the watched folder is left alone. Items that fail (a disk not connected) are tried again twice. Rules run from the top of the list; Skip the rules below keeps the rules under one from touching what it handled. A rule handles each item once, until the item changes; a rule you edit looks at everything again. Partial downloads (.crdownload, .download, .part…) and items changed in the last ten seconds wait until they are complete. Items that rules keep handling over and over, such as two rules moving a file back and forth, are left alone after five rounds a minute. Everything rules do is in the log under the rules, with Undo for each item (it never deletes anything: what was moved goes back, what was trashed comes out of the Trash) and in the file rules.log.

Rules look at the folder's own items, not inside its subfolders, and run while PaneShift runs, also with its window closed (click its Dock icon to get the window back); Open PaneShift at login keeps them running. The App Store edition can watch and fill only folders you choose there (they are granted like the folders in Settings › Access).

APFS clones and the Trash§

Copying on the same APFS volume makes a clone: instant, and it uses no extra space until one copy changes.
F8 moves to the Trash, so the Finder's Put Back works.

Finder tags§

Add the Tags column in a column set to see tags in the panels.
Right-click › Tags adds or removes the Finder's colored tags. When all chosen items already have the tag, the same item removes it.
Change Attributes (⌘I) sets tags by name for many items at once.

iCloud Drive§

The iCloud column shows whether each item is downloaded or only in iCloud.
Commands › Download Now (iCloud) downloads the marked items. Remove Download (iCloud) frees the space and keeps them in iCloud.

⇧⌘S (File › Share…) shows the system's Share menu for the marked items: AirDrop, Mail, Messages, Notes and others.
PaneShift › Services offers the marked files to every service that accepts files, such as your own Automator and Shortcuts quick actions.

Packages§

Apps and other bundles show as single items. Return opens them like the Finder does. ⌥⌘↓ (Go › Show Package Contents) enters them as folders.

Space analysis§

⇧⌘I (View › Analyze Space…) scans the current folder and draws a treemap: each rectangle is a file or folder, sized by how much space it takes. Click a folder to open it, double-click any item to show it in the panel. Rescan measures again.

Process Viewer§

Commands › Process Viewer… shows the running processes in the other panel, with their PID, user, CPU use and memory, refreshed every two seconds. Type in the filter to find one by name or PID; Only my processes hides the system's. Click a column title to sort. F8 or Quit asks the selected processes to quit (apps quit as from the Dock and may ask to save); ⇧F8 or Force Quit ends them at once, after a question. Processes of other users can't be ended. Tab goes back to the files, Esc or the same command puts the files back in the panel. Direct edition only.

Code signatures§

Commands › Code Signature… tells you whether an app's signature is valid, which team signed it, whether Apple notarized it and whether macOS has it in quarantine.

Git§

In a folder inside a Git repository, the Git column shows each file's status: modified, added, deleted, untracked and so on. It needs the Xcode command line tools and is part of the Direct edition. The standard “Code” column set shows it for folders under Code, Developer and src.

Shortcuts§

PaneShift adds three actions to the Shortcuts app:

Open in PaneShift: Shows a folder in the active panel, or a file in its folder.
Open Path in PaneShift: Shows the folder at a typed path (~ for home). Siri and Spotlight know it as “Open a folder in PaneShift”.
Get PaneShift's Current Folder: Returns the path of the active panel, for use in later steps.

AppleScript§

tell application "PaneShift"
    open folder "~/Projects"
    set here to current folder
end tell

open folder takes a path to a folder, or to a file to show in its folder. current folder is the path of the active panel. This also works from osascript in Terminal.

Right-click PaneShift in the Dock to open any hotlist folder.

Apple Intelligence§

On Macs that support Apple Intelligence, with it turned on in System Settings, PaneShift uses the on-device model. Your files and descriptions never leave the Mac.

Find Files: describe what you are looking for and Fill In sets the fields. More
Multi-Rename: describe the new names and Suggest fills in the masks. More
Lister: Summarize writes a short summary of a text file.

If the model is not available, PaneShift says why: the Mac doesn't support Apple Intelligence, it is turned off, or the model is still downloading.

Text in images§

Find Files can find text in photos and scanned PDFs with the Mac's text recognition, which runs on any Mac without Apple Intelligence. See Finding files.

Accessibility§

The file lists work with VoiceOver: each row reads its name, its kind, whether it is marked, and its size.