The Mac file manager Finder should have shipped.
A fast, native macOS file browser with a built-in code editor, a Markdown reader, real Finder-compatible color tags, Spotlight search, archive tools, and one-click "open in Terminal / VS Code / Cursor / Claude Code / Codex" — in one self-contained app that runs entirely on your Mac.
⬇ Download the latest release · 🌐 Landing page · ⭐ Star · ❤️ Donate
macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon + Intel (universal) · ≈ 6.8 MB · Free & open source (MIT)
FinderFlow is a drop-in alternative to the macOS Finder for people who live in their files all day — developers, writers, designers, and anyone who has ever wished Finder did more. It keeps everything you like about Finder (column / list / icon views, Quick Look, tags, the sidebar) and adds the things you normally reach for three other apps to get.
It's one download, fully self-contained — no Homebrew, no Node, no runtimes, no plugins. Everything runs locally on your Mac. There is no telemetry, no account, and no network calls.
| Browse, tag & search | Edit code — built in |
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| Color tags, Spotlight search, sortable columns, copy-path | Tabs, syntax highlighting, command palette, Sublime-style minimap |
| Column view + preview | Icon view + color tags |
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| Finder-style miller columns with a live preview & Get Info pane | Resizable icon grid; tap a tag to filter Mac-wide |
| Markdown — read mode | Markdown — edit mode |
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| Rendered preview (no Obsidian needed) | Edit & save with ⌘S, auto-save on close |
These are the headline reasons people switch. None of them ship in Finder.
- 📝 A real code editor, built in. Double-click any text or code file and it opens in a proper editor — tabs, syntax highlighting for dozens of languages, a fuzzy command palette (⌘⇧P), Sublime keybindings, and a Sublime-style minimap. You don't need to install Sublime Text or VS Code just to make a quick edit.
- 📖 A Markdown reader and editor. Open
.mdfiles into a clean rendered view (great for AI-generated / README / notes files) — or flip to edit mode and save with ⌘S. No Obsidian or separate Markdown app required. - 👀 Real preview for popular file types. Built on the same Quick Look engine Finder uses — images, PDFs, code, video, audio, docs — right inside the column preview pane and with the Space bar.
- 🖱️ UI-driven file operations. Cut, copy, paste, move, duplicate, rename, make alias, compress, extract — all from buttons and right-click menus, with full undo/redo. No memorizing Terminal commands.
- 🧑💻 One-click IDE & terminal launch. Open the current folder in Terminal, VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex — buttons appear only for the tools you actually have installed.
- 🔎 Search that actually finds things. This folder, this folder + subfolders,
or Spotlight-powered across your whole Mac — including extension search
(type
.pdf) — without leaving the window. - 🔗 Copy a folder's path in one click. A dedicated copy-path button with a confirmation toast. (Try doing that quickly in Finder.)
- 🗜️ Archive tools that just work. Compress to
.zip; extract.zip / .tar / .gz / .tgz / .bz2 / .xzusing macOS's built-in tools.
If you've ever opened Finder, then Sublime, then Obsidian, then Terminal just to deal with one folder — FinderFlow is that whole stack in a single window.
Browsing & navigation
- Three views — Column (Finder-style miller columns with a live preview pane + optional ancestor "tree" mode), List (sortable by Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, Extension, with optional Group by Date), and Icon (resizable 32–128 pt grid).
- Sidebar — system locations, your pinned folders, recent folders, and a Tags section.
- Path bar — clickable breadcrumbs, double-click to type a path, one-click Copy Path.
- Status bar — item count, selection size, free disk space.
- Quick Look (Space) + a built-in preview panel.
Finder-compatible color tags
- Add/remove the 7 standard macOS colors from any view's right-click Tags menu — toggles exactly like Finder, multiple colors per file preserved.
- Written in macOS's real tag format, so they also show up in Finder.
- Tag dots render in list / icon / column / preview; tapping a tag in the sidebar filters Mac-wide via Spotlight.
File operations (with Undo/Redo)
- Copy / Cut / Paste, Duplicate, inline Rename, Make Alias (symlink).
- Move to Trash and Delete Permanently (confirmed).
- Compress to
.zip; Extract common archive formats. - Share / AirDrop, Show in Finder, Get Info, Copy Path.
- Multi-select aware; partial-failure-safe paste/move with correct undo.
Built-in code editor (bundled & offline)
- Double-click a text/code file to edit it in FinderFlow.
- Syntax highlighting for dozens of languages; multiple files as tabs.
- Fuzzy command palette (⌘⇧P), settings menu, Sublime keybindings.
- Sublime-style minimap (theme-aware, click/drag to scroll).
- Runs in a real, standalone macOS window — drag, minimize, resize, fit — and never blocks the main browser window.
Markdown reader / editor
- Rendered preview (GitHub/Obsidian-style, dark + light) with internal
.mdlink navigation, plus an Edit mode with ⌘S save and auto-save on close.
Search
- Scopes: This Folder, This Folder & Subfolders, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Home, and Entire Mac (Spotlight).
- Name and extension search; live count; runs in the background.
System integration
- Finder Sync extension — right-click in Finder: New Folder Here, Copy Path, Open in Terminal, Open in FinderFlow.
- Set FinderFlow as your default folder handler (Settings) — routes folder opens to FinderFlow via LaunchServices.
finderflow://URL scheme + "Open With" for folders & text files.- Launch at Login toggle, in-app toast notifications.
FinderFlow touches your files, so it's built to earn that trust — and it was put through a senior-QA and security pass before release.
- 100% local. No network, no telemetry, no accounts. FinderFlow makes no outbound connections of its own. Nothing about your files ever leaves your Mac.
- Security-reviewed. An AppleScript-injection path (via crafted filenames in Get Info / Open in Terminal) was found and fixed with strict string-literal escaping, and the same hardening was applied to the Finder extension. The shell/AppleScript bridges were audited end-to-end.
- Bug-hardened. The QA pass also fixed a dead keyboard command, unsaved Markdown data-loss on close, and made partial paste/move failures undo-safe — so you don't lose work.
- Sandboxed where it matters. The Finder extension runs sandboxed; the main app is not sandboxed because a file manager needs full file-system access (the same reason Finder isn't). It only uses the access you grant via standard macOS prompts.
- Open source. Read every line. MIT licensed.
A file manager should disappear into the background, not sit in Activity Monitor eating your RAM:
- ≈ 55–60 MB idle while browsing — measured, not guessed.
- File-type icons are cached, not duplicated, so big folders stay lean.
- The code editor and Markdown preview use embedded web tech (WebKit) only while open, and that memory is released the moment you close the window.
- Event-driven — it isn't polling the disk or burning CPU in the background.
| macOS | 14.0 Sonoma or later |
|---|---|
| Chip | Apple Silicon or Intel (universal binary) |
| Download | ≈ 6.8 MB · .dmg |
| Extras | None — fully self-contained |
| Price | Free & open source (MIT) |
- Download the latest
FinderFlow-1.4.dmgfrom Releases and open it. - Drag FinderFlow into Applications.
- First launch (one-time Gatekeeper step). FinderFlow is free and isn't
signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS asks once:
- Try to open it (it gets blocked), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to "FinderFlow was blocked" and click Open Anyway.
- Or run once in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/FinderFlow.app
- (Optional) Enable the Finder right-click menu under System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Extensions → FinderFlow.
The first time you browse Desktop/Documents/Downloads (or use Get Info / Open in Terminal), macOS shows its standard permission prompts — just click Allow. These are normal for any file manager.
Requires Xcode 16 / Swift 5.9+.
git clone https://github.com/Gtarafdar/FinderFlow.git
cd FinderFlow
open FinderFlow.xcodeproj # build & run (⌘R)Produce a distributable Universal DMG:
./release.sh # → build/FinderFlow-<version>.dmgA full landing page lives in docs/ and is published with GitHub Pages:
https://gtarafdar.github.io/FinderFlow/
It serves from the main branch /docs folder (Settings → Pages → Deploy from a
branch → main → /docs).
Full capability list & development history: CHANGELOG.md.
Gobinda Tarafdar — WordPress product marketer by trade, stubborn problem-solver by habit, lifelong Harry Potter devotee by heart.
By day I'm the Product Marketing Specialist at WPBakery — the page builder that quietly powers a sizeable corner of the WordPress universe. Before that, I helped a single plugin cross 400,000+ active users through positioning, user research, and a relentless focus on what actually moves the needle. When the day-job owl flies home, I tinker on my own little workshop of spells — FinderFlow is one of them.
Also from the workshop:
- WPBakery — the page builder I do product marketing for.
- Docscriber — documentation, conjured.
- TheRecaller — a memory charm for what you forget online.
- TheEditra — a video-editing cauldron of my own brewing.
- The Quill Press — tech news styled after the Daily Prophet.
- Costlas — cost-of-living for 140 countries & 1,377 cities.
If FinderFlow saves you a few trips to Finder, here's how to help — all optional, all appreciated:
- ⭐ Star it on GitHub — helps others find it.
- ❤️ Donate — keeps the workshop lit.
- 🐦 Follow on X / Twitter
- 💼 Connect on LinkedIn
This app is ad-hoc signed and not notarized (no paid Apple Developer account), which is why the one-time Gatekeeper step is needed. To ship it without that prompt, sign with a Developer ID certificate and notarize.
In-app updates are optional and can be turned off in Settings → Updates.
Where updates come from
- Only from official GitHub Releases
on
Gtarafdar/FinderFlow— hardcoded in the app, not user-configurable. - Downloads use HTTPS (GitHub’s TLS).
Integrity check
- Every release ships a companion
FinderFlow-x.y.dmg.sha256file. - Before installing, the app verifies the DMG’s SHA-256 hash against that file.
- If the checksum is missing or doesn’t match, the update is blocked.
What this means for you
- Same trust model as downloading the DMG manually from GitHub — you trust the maintainer’s releases.
- A public repo does not weaken security; the updater uses read-only APIs and ships no secrets.
- Auto-update makes a compromised release reach users faster — protect your GitHub account with 2FA and only publish releases you built yourself.
What we don’t verify (yet)
- Apple Developer ID signatures or notarization (requires a paid Apple account).
- For maximum assurance, compare the published SHA-256 on the release page with
a hash you compute locally:
shasum -a 256 FinderFlow-x.y.dmg.
MIT © Gobinda Tarafdar. See LICENSE.
FinderFlow is an independent project and is not affiliated with Apple. Finder is a trademark of Apple Inc.