Greetings to you, Medium readers of the World all the way from Ukraine!
I’m a huge Mac fan and always thinking of ways to boost my workflows. Like most of us, I spend countless hours dragging files, editing images, sending e-mails, sharing content, ect…
Has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever tried to drag a picture from Safari on your Desktop and realized it’s obscured by the windows of other apps?
You had to close or move those away and then try again.
Witchcraft like this happened to me all the time!
Have you ever found a picture, just right for your sublime Twitter post, but it’s too big?.. or just wanted to know its size and see if it fits in your article…
In order to accomplish this task you have to: save it -> open an image editing app -> crop or resize it -> save changes -> right click the image -> locate Share in the context menu -> Twitter -> and then finally you are done with it…
Most of us have definitely had this feeling, when you want to resize/crop some image and this inner voice says “oh.. again. Loading Photoshop…” what and overkill.. With FilePane you can accomplish these types of tasks in just a couple clicks.
Those countless cases like the above get quite cumbersome, don’t they? These tiny 10 second — 5 minute black holes eat our valuable time over and over again.
I grew very tired of losing my time and one sunny day I said, “enough!” Can’t I find some way to figure out how to make my Mac life easier? If I’m annoyed by this, maybe other people are, too. Even if they aren’t, they’ll appreciate the tool, after trying it. ☺
I’ve been using Popclip for quite a while, and it inspired me to create a handy tool to save me from those painful file management issues.
Here is what I’ve come up with
FilePane — a small, but versatile file management utility, that works via a drag-and-drop pattern.
How does it work?
FilePane lives in your menu bar and can be triggered either by a dragging event or a customizable shortcut.
The “drop here” window appears near your cursor, as soon as you start to drag.
If your intention is not FilePane related, you just drag the file further and the drop area disappers.
The same auto-hide feature applies to the main action windows. You just move the cursor away, and it vanishes.
As a result, FilePane never obscures your other apps or files and never gets in your way.
Moreover, there’s a customizable exclusion list, to illiminate the unnecessary ‘drop here’ popups. I suggest adding image editing apps to it (Photoshop, Pixelmator, Sketch)
The app has a minimalist, simple, yet functional UI, which blends in well with Yosemite. If you’re not fond of 10.10's new looks, FilePane has a slightly different look on Mavericks and works smoothly on both.
What can I do with it?
Based on the file type you’ve drag-and-dropped, it offers numerous actions:
- crop, rotate, resize, convert and compress images on the fly;
- freehand drawing is available for images or screenshots;
- content sharing (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook) and Airdrop;
- set, store desktop pictures;
- copying/moving files to custom user destinations;
- copy file size or path to clipboard;
- converting Text documents to PDF;
- create new Folders, RTF, TXT, Excel and Word files, where you need them, and start editing, in just 2 clicks;
- save highlighted text to TXT;
- copy it to the clipboard;
- see the word and glyph count, or share it;
Every single action is just one-two clicks away.
FilePane is not bound to Finder only, as it may seem at first glance. It works with other apps, too! For example, in Safari you can easily save, edit, share, e-mail any image on the fly.
If you often work with e-mail and need to save/sort attachements you receive— just drag-and-drop it into FilePane, select the destination and that’s it.
Default locations include: Desktop, Documents, Movies, Downloads, Pictures, Music folders. You can add your custom destination folders, which makes any file move/copy task a 2 click action.
This short video by WonderHowTo highlights some of the FilePane’s features:
Do I really need this?
I’d say, it all depends on how often you use those features, FilePane simplifies.
With FilePane being so versatile, one will find his favourite feature.
Especially if you are an editor, journalist, writer, designer, social media manager, content manager or even a programmer.
If you constantly resize, edit images or move/share/mail files - this utility app will simplify and accelerate to your workflow and productivity.
FilePane has received positive feedback from users on the MacAppStore and its current and earlier versions have been reviewed and mentioned by: MacSources, MacWorld, LifeHacker, TUAW, AddictiveTips, LoopInsight and others.
Recently it’s been featured on Product Hunt and included in their Marvelous Mac Apps list!
Having developed FilePane as a tool for myself, I hope, it’ll be your daily companion too. It’s also a work in progress, so I’m constantly improving and adding new features to it. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do and share that joy with others afterwards.
Should you have some questions/suggestions I’ll gladly connect on Twitter or support@mymixapps.com
Jump aboard and enjoy☺
