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.

The interface is localized into 11 languages — English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, and Simplified Chinese — and follows your Mac's system language automatically.

Installation

FilePop comes three 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. The Setapp version is a one-time purchase, not part of a Setapp Membership subscription; it installs through the Setapp client, with no separate license key and no trial. 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.

On macOS 27, dragging into the menu bar opens Spaces, so FilePop springs open as the drag nears its icon instead, just below the menu bar, and you drop straight into it.

Don't want it springing open? Turn off Preferences → General → Open when a file is dragged to the icon.

FilePop opens on the folder you were last in, even after a relaunch — unless you've set a Startup Folder, in which case it resets there once you've been away long enough. If the last folder has since been deleted, it falls back to the usual starting point.

Show in FilePop

Right-click any file or folder in the Finder and choose Services → Show in FilePop. FilePop opens on the spot with that item selected. The same command is in the Services menu of any app that hands over files.

The command appears once FilePop has launched at least once. You can turn it off in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services.

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 with the button in the title bar beside the … menu — it shows a window glyph in the popover and a menu-bar glyph in the window. Preferences → Appearance also offers "Show window at mouse cursor when triggered by hotkey" so the window opens where you're looking instead of where you last left it.

Otherwise the floating window stays where you put it: clicking the menu-bar icon reopens it at the size and place you left it. The popover and the window each keep their own size.

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.

Mini mode supports multiple selection too: ⌘-click adds or removes an item, ⇧-click selects a range, and ⌘A selects everything. Dragging any selected item carries all of them, and Open, Reveal, Copy and Move to Trash act on the whole selection.

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.

Sorting

The toolbar's sort menu orders the current folder by Name, Date Modified, Date Added, Size, or Kind. The current key carries a checkmark under the Sort By heading, and Ascending and Descending are choices of their own below it. Sorting by name clusters folders at the top; the other keys mix folders in with files. Your choice of field and direction persists across launches.

Recents has a sort menu of its own, because its order comes from Spotlight rather than from a folder listing: Last Opened (the default), Date Modified, or Date Added, always newest first.

Grouping

The same sort menu has a Group By section: None, Kind, Date Modified, Date Added, or Size. Each group gets a heading, in every view mode, and the sort order still applies within each group.

• Kind — one group per kind (Folder, PDF document, PNG image…), alphabetically.
• Date Modified / Date Added — grouped the way Finder does it: Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, then by month for this year and by year before that.
• Size — largest bands first (1 GB or more, 100 MB to 1 GB, and so on down), with folders last, since a folder's size isn't measured.

Inspector

The toolbar's right-hand sidebar button shows or hides the inspector pane, which describes the selected item: a preview, its name, and its kind, size and modification date — plus dimensions for images and the version number for apps. Click the preview to open Quick Look.

Sidebar & favorites

The sidebar has two sections:

• Favorites — always headed by Recents, a smart folder of recently-opened items that can't be removed, followed by folders you've added. Manage them in Preferences → Sidebar: add with a folder picker, drag to reorder, and select one to remove it. Hover the Favorites heading in the sidebar for an Edit link straight there, or right-click any favorite → Remove from Favorites to unpin it on the spot. Recents is a flat list, so selecting an item there shows its real location in the path bar, and right-clicking it offers Reveal in FilePop, which goes to the folder that holds it and selects it.
• Locations — Macintosh HD, iCloud Drive (when it's turned on), other mounted drives with an eject button, cloud-storage providers such as Dropbox or Google Drive, and the Trash.

Drag the divider beside the sidebar to make it wider or narrower; FilePop remembers the width. Toggle the sidebar off entirely with the toolbar button (⌥⌘S) to reclaim horizontal space. Your places stay one click away even then — a Places menu (the star-and-list icon) takes the toggle's place in the toolbar and lists the same favorites and locations, plus folders you've visited recently.

Preferences → Sidebar also 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, and the user-managed list is ignored, so there's nothing to edit. The Mac App Store build is sandboxed and can't request Full Disk Access, so it has no switch and always uses your own list.

Recent folders

The toolbar's Recent Folders button (a globe with a clock) lists folders you've been in lately; pick one to go there. The menu has two sections: Recent in Finder, read from Finder's own Go → Recent Folders list, so a folder you're already working in over there is one click away, and Recent in FilePop, the folders you've visited in FilePop. The Mac App Store build is sandboxed and can't read Finder's list, so it shows the FilePop section only.

Breadcrumbs & path bar

The path bar runs along the bottom of the popover. Each path component is clickable — click any ancestor to jump there. Right-click a component for Reveal in Finder and Copy Path, the same entries the file right-click menu has.

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 enclosing folder.

Single, range, toggle

Range selection works the same in every view, including mini mode. ⇧-click and ⇧-arrow share one anchor, so you can start a range with the keyboard and finish it with the mouse, or the other way round.

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:

• Open (or ⌘O) — a single folder navigates in place, a single file launches in its default app. Apps and other packages count as files here, so double-clicking an app launches it rather than opening its bundle. With multiple items selected, each opens the same way — folders open in Finder, files in their apps. Turn on Preferences → Advanced → Navigation → Opening a folder shows it in Finder and this reads Open in Finder instead, sending a single folder there too.
• Reveal in Finder — becomes Open Here when the preference above is on, navigating a single folder in-app instead of just revealing it, so browsing inside FilePop stays reachable even with Open redirected to 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.
• Rename… — single items only. Only the name is selected, not the extension, so you can type a new name straight away. The title-bar undo button reverses a rename. Not offered for items in the Trash.
• 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.

Double-clicking a file that's part of a multi-selection opens the whole group, not just the one you clicked — the same behavior as the Open command above.

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.

Undoing a move

When FilePop moves something — a drag between folders inside FilePop, a drop from Finder into a FilePop folder, or a rename — a blue undo button appears in the title bar. Click it to put everything from that move back where it was. It's one level deep: a new move replaces the last one. The button goes away after you've summoned FilePop a couple more times, so an old move doesn't linger.

Copies have nothing to undo, and a drag out of FilePop into Finder is performed by the system, which never tells FilePop where the files went, so neither offers the button. If an item has been moved again since, or something now occupies its original spot, undo leaves it alone rather than overwrite anything.

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.

Interface size

Choose Large in Preferences → Appearance → Interface Size to enlarge FilePop's lists, columns, icon grid, mini-mode rows, sidebar and inspector, without changing your display resolution. Default returns to the standard size.

Accessibility

FilePop works with VoiceOver and Voice Control. Every file, folder, sidebar row and control is named, and everything in the right-click menu is also available as an accessibility action. FilePop announces its confirmations, and respects Reduce Motion and Increase Contrast.

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).
• Open when a file is dragged to the icon — default on. See Summoning the popover.
• Toggle FilePop — keyboard recorder for the global hotkey, with a Reset to Default button.
• Startup Folder — pin a folder FilePop always resets to when you open it, once you've been away at least as long as you choose (from "Every time" up to a day). Quick back-to-back opens still resume where you left off.

Appearance

• Interface Size — Default or Large. See Interface size.
• Close popover on click outside — default on. Off pins the popover until you dismiss it explicitly.
• Close after dragging an item out — default on. Dragging a file out of the popover dismisses it the moment the cursor leaves, so it's out of your way as you drop elsewhere. Window mode is unaffected.
• 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.
• Size columns to fit their contents — default off, where every column in Columns view is the same fixed width; on, each column is as wide as its longest name needs, within limits.

Sidebar

• Sync Favorites with Finder — read Finder's sidebar list directly. Requires Full Disk Access. Not offered in the Mac App Store build, which is sandboxed.
• Favorites — add folders with a picker, drag to reorder, select to remove. Hidden while syncing with Finder, where the list is Finder's.

Advanced

• Opening a folder shows it in Finder instead of navigating here (under Navigation) — default off. Applies to double-click, ↩, ⌘O, and the right-click menu's Open command. With it on, Reveal in Finder becomes Open Here, so a folder is still one click away inside FilePop.
• Install filepop CLI.
• Change sandbox root access (Mac App Store build only).

Keyboard shortcuts

License & trial

Three 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.
• Setapp. A one-time purchase through Setapp — bought outright, not part of a Setapp Membership subscription. No separate license key; Setapp handles the purchase and delivers updates automatically. The app runs through the Setapp client, so keep it installed and your Setapp account active.

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