FilePop documentation

FilePop is a fast, native macOS file browser that lives in your menu bar. Summon it with a keystroke, grab a file, get back to work. Same view modes Finder has, with marquee selection in all of them, multi-selection-aware context menus, and Finder-conventional drag behaviour out of the box.

Installation

FilePop comes two ways. The direct download from bendansby.com/apps/filepop is a standard .dmg — drag FilePop.app into Applications. The Mac App Store version installs the usual way. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later; universal binary.

Summoning the popover

The default hotkey is ⌃⌥⌘P — a four-modifier combo picked to never clash with anything else. Press it to open; press it again to dismiss. Rebindable in Preferences → General with the keyboard recorder.

You can also click the menu-bar icon. With the cursor over the icon, drag a file onto it — the popover springs open as a Dock-style drop target, so you can navigate to a destination and let go.

Popover vs window mode

Two presentations:

• Popover — anchored to the menu-bar icon, dismisses on click-outside. The default.
• Window mode — free-floating, resizable panel that stays put until you close it. Useful for keeping FilePop visible while you work.

Switch between them in Preferences → Appearance. The two also offer "Show window at mouse cursor when triggered by hotkey" so the window opens where you're looking instead of where you last left it.

Resizing the popover

Grab any edge or corner of the popover — all eight handles work. Default size is 720×460; resize anywhere in the range 280×300 to 1400×1000. Your dimensions persist across launches.

Mini mode

Drag the popover narrower than ~516 pt and FilePop collapses to a single-column layout: sidebar hides, the file area takes the whole popover. Useful for keeping FilePop tucked into a thin sliver of the menu bar without losing functionality.

Below ~700 pt the toolbar search field also hides — ⌘F still focuses it.

Icons, List, Columns

The toolbar segmented picker switches view modes; ⌘1 / ⌘2 / ⌘3 are the keyboard equivalents.

• Icons — grid of thumbnails. Full 2D marquee selection.
• List — rows with name, date modified, size, kind. Vertical-strip marquee.
• Columns — Finder-style multi-column browser. Vertical-strip marquee. Default view.

Sidebar & favorites

The sidebar pins two sections:

• Recents — smart folder of recently-opened items. Always present, can't be hidden.
• Favorites — folders you've added. Drag a folder onto the sidebar to pin it. Drag to reorder. Right-click → Remove from Favorites to unpin.

Preferences → Advanced offers Sync Favorites with Finder — read the same sidebar list Finder uses (requires Full Disk Access). With it on, your FilePop sidebar mirrors Finder's; the user-managed list is ignored.

Breadcrumbs & path bar

The path bar runs along the bottom of the popover. Each path component is clickable — click any ancestor to jump there.

Go to Path

⌘⇧G opens a path-entry field with autocomplete. Type any absolute path; ↩ navigates, Esc dismisses. Supports ~ expansion.

Back & forward

Toolbar arrows or ⌘[ / ⌘]. ⌘↑ goes to the parent folder.

Single, range, toggle

Marquee selection

Click-and-drag in the empty space of any view mode (Icons, List, or Columns) to draw a rubber-band selection rectangle. Items the rectangle touches are selected.

Hold ⇧ while starting the marquee to add hits to the existing selection rather than replace it.

Right-click menu

Right-click any file, folder, or selection group to get:

• Reveal in Finder
• Copy Path (count appears when multiple items are selected)
• Open Terminal Here
• Copy — copies the file(s) to the system clipboard, ready to paste into Finder or another FilePop popover.
• Paste — appears on folders. Drops clipboard contents into that folder.
• Move to Trash (count when multiple)
• New Folder / New Folder with Selection — the second variant creates the folder and moves the selected items into it.

Multi-selection actions

Every action in the right-click menu and toolbar acts on the whole selection. Multi-selection counts surface in menu titles (e.g. Move 3 items to Trash, Copy Path (3)) so the action and its target are visible at a glance.

Copy & paste files

Use the right-click menu's Copy + Paste entries, or ⌘C / ⌘V. FilePop copies the file references onto the system clipboard, so the paste works into Finder, into Mail attachments, into other apps — anywhere file URLs are accepted.

Paste handles every common pasteboard flavour: file URLs are copied as files, image bytes are written as PNG / JPEG / TIFF / HEIC (auto-detected), text is written as RTF / HTML / TXT clippings, and bare web URLs are downloaded.

Quick Look

Select an item and press Space to open the system Quick Look panel. Arrow keys move the selection inside FilePop and the panel follows — preview as you browse. Press Space again or close the panel to dismiss.

Drag out to other apps

Click and hold any selected item, then drag into another app — Mail to attach, Slack to upload, a code editor to open, Finder to copy somewhere. Multi-selection drags carry the whole group.

Drag in to copy or move

Drop files (from Finder or any app exporting file URLs) into FilePop to copy or move them into the current folder. The cursor badge shows whether the operation is a copy or a move before you let go.

Modifier rules

FilePop follows the Finder convention exactly:

• Default — move within the same volume, copy across volumes.
• Hold ⌥ — force copy regardless of volume.
• Hold ⌘ — force move regardless of volume.

Spring-loaded folders

Hover a folder mid-drag and FilePop opens it for you after ~¾ second so you can drop into a nested destination without putting the dragged item down. The delay is calibrated to ignore grazes — you have to actually pause over the folder for it to spring.

The filepop CLI

Preferences → Advanced → Install filepop Command Line Tool drops a symlink into /usr/local/bin (prompting for an admin password if needed). With it installed:

filepop ~/Projects/big-codebase
filepop                          # open current directory

Same behavior as opening from the menu — the popover summons pre-navigated to the path.

Preferences

General

• Start at login.
• Show icon in menu bar — hiding the icon falls back to window mode (no anchor to dock the popover against).
• Toggle FilePop — keyboard recorder for the global hotkey, with a Reset to Default button.

Appearance

• Close popover on click outside — default on. Off pins the popover until you dismiss it explicitly.
• Show window at mouse cursor when triggered by hotkey — default off. On opens the window where the cursor is, not where you last placed it.

Advanced

• Sync Favorites with Finder — read Finder's sidebar list directly. Requires Full Disk Access.
• Install filepop CLI.
• Change sandbox root access (Mac App Store build only).

Keyboard shortcuts

License & trial

Two distribution paths:

• Mac App Store — purchase and updates handled by Apple. No license keys.
• Direct download — licensed via Lemon Squeezy. FilePop → Buy License… opens checkout, Enter License… activates the key from the purchase email. Activation is online; cached locally for 30+ days offline.

Unlicensed direct-download copies show a one-screen reminder roughly every tenth popover summon. No features are locked.