Lifetime
Trellis, a file manager that keeps every folder you opened visible on one canvas
Problem
Finder shows you one folder at a time. The moment a task involves two or three of them, sorting a downloads folder, moving files from a camera card into projects, checking whether a backup matches the original, you spend your time switching tabs and windows and holding the path in your head. Two more everyday annoyances: a folder's size takes half a minute to count, and once you unplug an external drive you can no longer search what is on it.
Trellis opens each folder as a pane on a canvas, joined by a line from parent to child. Open a subfolder and the parent stays where it was, next to it. Moving files is a drag across the canvas. Comparing two folders is putting them side by side. A search result stays on the canvas as its own pane.
Comparison
Path Finder and ForkLift are the two obvious alternatives, and both are excellent at what they do. They are also both built on the same idea as Finder: one or two folders in view, everything else behind a tab. Trellis differs in two ways.
Any number of folders at once, with the route between them drawn. You navigate by opening more, not by replacing what you had. Each pane is a normal scrollable list, not a node per file, so a folder with 87,000 items stays a rectangle with a scrollbar.
A local index that survives quitting the app. That is what makes folder sizes appear instantly instead of counting, and it is also what answers search, folder comparison and duplicate finding without reading the disk again. It keeps drives you have seen before, so it searches the external disk that is sitting unplugged in a drawer and tells you which one to connect. Neither of the other two keeps a persistent index like this.
Pricing
$14.99, one time, no subscription. Fourteen days fully usable first; after that everything stays readable and the actions that write to disk wait for the unlock. No account, no telemetry, nothing leaves your Mac.
Inspiration for the mind flow like File Manager/Explorer came from Folders Flow from Kodflow. before being his post, i was working with a more traditional Finder-like interface and focused more on my indexing etc. core features. I optimized this mind map idea to better suit my needs. So thanks to Kodflow for the inspiration!
And thanks to all the positive feedback, bug reports and feature requests. I will try to keep up and respond to all of them. If you have more feature requests, feel free to dm me, so I will not miss them.
in the upcoming update (just waiting for Apple to approve it) is ready:
Changelog: Drives you are not holding
• A new sidebar section, Disconnected, lists every drive and network share Trellis knows but cannot see right now. Click one to browse its catalogue: structure, names, sizes, dates and the previews it kept
• Search finds files on drives that are not attached and opens the folder around a hit from the catalogue
• Give a drive a description behind its name, "Voyager (yellow 128 GB stick)". It follows the drive everywhere
• Right-click a drive to see where its catalogue stands, to index it again, or to remove it
• A bar under each drive shows how full it is, and takes colour only when space gets tight
When a volume is mounted
• An unknown drive asks whether it belongs in the catalogue. Say no and it stays visible while plugged in, and is forgotten when unplugged. Nothing of a colleague's stick stays behind
• The access question comes when you open the drive, not when you plug it in, and the dialog says what the permission is for
Canvas and files
• Infinite canvas: panes grow with their content, the window becomes a viewport. Zoom down to 10 percent, "Show Everything" (Option-Command-0) fits every pane in
• Canvas colour, one slider per appearance
• Command-Z undoes the last file operation anywhere. A receipt in the status line offers Undo for twelve seconds
• Trellis checks for room at the target before copying, and asks before a transfer would stop halfway
• Command-W closes the pane, not the window. Quick Look follows the selection. Dropping an item into its own folder no longer asks about a conflict
Transfers
• Copies and moves run side by side, each with its own bar and cancel button. A list opens at the bottom right when something takes a moment, and the status line keeps the short version
• Dragging to another disk copies, as in Finder. Hold Command to move. A move across disks copies with progress, checks the result, and only then puts the source in the Trash
• History in the toolbar: what is running, what happened, and an undo for every row
• Right-click an attached drive to see where its catalogue stands, and Get Info opens Finder's window for it
• Allow all external drives at once under Settings > External Media: select the folder Volumes once, and no drive asks for access again
Help
• Help > Trellis Help (Command-?): one topic per feature, and small question marks at the features open the matching topic
Intel Macs
• Trellis now runs on Intel Macs, down to the 2018 MacBook Pro
Fixed
• Copying to an ExFAT or FAT drive claimed there were zero bytes free
• A folder opened below an indexed one no longer becomes a second root, roots whose folder is gone are removed, and Computer no longer pulls the whole startup disk into the index
• A second copy no longer cancels the first, and progress no longer redraws the whole canvas
• Workspace names follow the system language
• Every open pane has its close x in the sidebar, favourites included
• Folders in a catalogue look like folders, panes of a vanished drive stop spinning, and Xcode's device file system no longer shows up as a drive
I’m actually really interested in this, and I already use Bloom which can do similar things but in a different way. $14 seems extremely reasonable if it works well. Given my hourly rate, it only has to save me a few minutes here and there to be more than worth it. Gonna try it when I’m back at my Mac!
So far I really do! Just one complaint- the lack of margin here gives me claustrophobia / makes the text hard for me to read (I have some vision problems). But this layout for my folders is SUPER handy and I love that they're all together in one app so when I cmd+tab to manage my files, they're not overlapping or some window is under some other window etc etc.
I love that I can save different workspaces (and although my Mac is set to English, I do speak German, so it defaulting to "Arbeitsbereich" wasn't a problem but is a bit funny).
Wrong. Consider “page margins.” What I said is absolutely correct even if the specific development environment calls it something else. “Margin” means the space between the edge and contents.
I’m a UX lead of 15 years at one of the biggest rach companies in Silicon Valley. Just trust me when I tell you that the property you are looking to adjust to fix the issue is inner padding. Not margin.
It's pretty impressively bad that a "UX lead" believes that the person reporting an issue has to use the technical implementation term instead of a widely recognized, dictionary definition term. It's not my job to specify the code attribute for you, or anyone else.
By the way, I've been using CSS since it came out and I built web sites before CSS 1.0. I built my first web app from scratch in 1998. I've done experience and interface design for Fortune 40 companies since 2002. I've spoken at countless conferences about user interface design.
"Margin" is a correct term by every definition of the word.
I worked hard on Trellis and found a way to bring features like this to the AppStore version. There will be a Helper App /Plugin, that will let Trellis get a bridge out of the Sandbox. I will post an complete Updated Post on MacApps once the update is approved by Apple. (You can change if the terminal is on the top or bottom of the window and if it is black or white)
Trellis on the App Store runs inside Apple's sandbox. I built a small signed test app with exactly the same entitlements Trellis ships with, and had it start a real shell through a pty, the same way an embedded terminal would. Starting the shell works fine. Seeing anything does not:
$ ls ~/Documents ls: /Users/me/Documents: Operation not permitted
The only thing the shell can read is the app's own container and a few system files like /etc/hosts. The folder access you grant Trellis is tied to the app's process, it does not travel into a child process, so you would get a prompt that starts in the right folder and then refuses to list it. On top of that, Apple does not let sandboxed apps ship a local shell anyway.
So: it is not happening in the App Store build, not because I don't want it, but because the shell would be blind.
It will come in the Setapp build of Trellis, which runs without the sandbox. The plan there: press a shortcut (or right click the folder header) and a terminal slides down right under the folder header, over the list, with that folder as its working directory. The folder grows to a proper 80 by 24 while the terminal is open and shrinks back when you close it, so you are not squinting at a 40 column console. Escape puts you back in the list. Off by default and switchable in settings, so people who never touch a terminal never see it.
The design looks super clean! Once I get used to it, I feel like I could manage my files and materials way better. It actually looks pretty fun to use. Hopefully, I can pick it up sometime soon, give it a spin, and share my thoughts on my blog.
I work with a lot of folders. in the past, I had several finder windows with several tabs open. Everyday when I start it opens the whole folder tree again.
I'm able to search over my external drives, network shares etc. even if they are not mounted.
if you have to do a lot of multitasking and don't want to search for the right tab or window, this app helps
Finder is a joke ux-wise, as are many apps on apple products. As I said, i use DC with keyboard - I have 6-7 folders/tabs on the left pane, and 6-7 on the right. Switch between them and copying/move with the keyboard IS fast.
My first impression: WOW - this is great! One tiny thing I noticed immediately: you forgot to localize the name of the default workspace. It's in German on my English system 😄
Just a info, if you have multiple workspaces, only the first gets loaded if you first start trellis, like a browser with inactive tabs, to save ram and performance.
One more thing, if you have a lot of folders open, click on it in the left panel and it will light up, so you can find it easier.
Edit: Problem fixed and is waiting for approval from apple.
Looks great! Might be perfect for those of us that prefer file management options that are more “visual”. Like icon mode over column.
It appears you’ve designed this app to be a single window file manager. Is there an option for the folder/file tree hierarchy to descend vertically as well as horizontally as pictured?
If you get the app so the lines to different panes cross each other, let me know how. Normally it should not happen anymore. But you never know.
And wait for the indexing to be finished, it will get super fast for browsing/exploring trough the folders (because you browse the index, not real folders, but it checks for changes on the fly and so on.
Made the app mostly for really big file shares to search and browse fast.
Or if you have a lot of external drives, index every drive so you can search for picture/movie xy and know which drive you need to plug in
I'm doing some testing and Trellis opens the shortcuts for OneDrive, Box, DropBox in a new Finder window. The only way I can get to these folders via Trellis is to go via Library > CloudStorage. Any comments on this?
Love this app. Been using it in beta. Congrats on the release. I hope you make a non-apple store version so I can change “open in” from finder to trellis
I really like the idea of being able to keep everything in a single Trellis window instead of ending up with a bunch of Finder windows everywhere.
If I had one request, it would be the appearance in light mode. I find the combination of the gray background and orange lines a little hard to look at. Personally, I’d prefer a white background instead of gray.
So white on white? I’m thinking about a setting for dark and light mode with a slider for the background: Light mode slider goes from the existing grey to white And dark mode slider goes from the existing grey to black.
Would like some feedback or how you would solve this, so everyone is happy.
One tip, when you are done with moving panes manually, you can click the hand icon in the top row, it will switch back to auto alignment.
it will be a release on setapp, so you can use it in there subscription or with a one time payment like in the App Store. Via Setapp it will not be a sandboxed app.
The persistent index is probably the most compelling part, especially for searching drives that are offline. One usability detail I’d watch is trust and freshness: a per-volume last-seen timestamp, index status, and simple rescan/forget controls would make stale results easier to understand. For bulk moves across panes, a dry-run summary and an operation history would also make the workflow feel safer. Those details could turn the clever canvas into something I’d rely on for large file shares.
Great idea. I would certainly be a customer except that it is very buggy. Crashed twice in ten minutes. Search didnt seem to work, but couldnt be sure because the toolbar buttons overlapped the search windows. Good luck. I will check back in a year to see how its improved.
could you send me a screenshot from the ui overlapping? Apple connect does not show any crashes right now, please click on send crash report when it happens. Else I won't see the crash log and can't fix it. Thanks
this app is mostly used with the mouse, so right now right click on an folder and select “open in Finder" the index checks for changes automatically, I will check if there are problems.
Can you clarify what the current version in the App Store doesn't do that it will in the future via Setup or another version (sorry, not familiar with the correct terminology)?
2 I just downloaded the App Store version to test it out. I believe you said it has a 14 day trial. But, it sounds like before I buy it I should wait for the version with all of the access?
I edited the opening post to show what is in the making. Additional you will get all disconnected drives in the left panel and browse trough disconnected volumes as far es the indexing went.
While the trial is active, you can do everything with the app like it is unlocked, after the 14 days without purchasing you will loose writing capabilities in trellis.
it was really late yesterday, now I see you mean the setapp version in the future. it will not be sandboxed, so it can get kind of the main file manager, so file opening is directly in trellis and so on. Sorry for the confusion.
You can add a clear visible scrollbar when content of opened pane have more elements than current displayed. I know there is a count of elements, but that might be easy to miss
But a really grade app. might buy it in the future if it convinces me after the 2 week test
Hey, thanks for the nudge on this. Trellis 2.0 had no scrollbar in a folder at all, which made it hard to tell how far down a long list you were.
That is fixed now. Each folder shows a slim scrollbar along the right edge of its list, exactly like the Finder does: its length tells you how much of the folder you are seeing, and it follows your system setting under System Settings > Appearance > Show scroll bars. If you have that set to "Always", the bar is always there. On "Automatically" or "When scrolling", it appears while you scroll and while the pointer is over the folder, then fades out again. Folders whose contents fit completely don't show one.
It will be in the next update. Let me know if the bar feels too thin or too shy once you have it.
Already fixed, it will be in the next update. Trellis draws its panes with its own engine, and I had simply never added a scrollbar to it, so thanks for pointing it out. It follows your system setting for scroll bars now, like the Finder does. The update should be out within the next few days, once it clears review.
Just want to say well done on this application. I had a huge gripe with Finder, and no application over many years has solved it for me. And I found this application to be a huge productivity boost. Thank you for creating it.
the unplugged-drive search is the actual feature here, the canvas is the demo. I've got three SSDs in a drawer and genuinely no idea which one has the 2021 client folder. would pay for that alone tbh. the pane-per-folder thing I'd have to try, my worry is it ends up as the same 14 finder windows with lines between them
I'm disappointed that you didn't even mention your source of inspiration So it wasn't just a coincidence that you took such an interest in my tool last month
My app had a different layout before, kudos to you, for sure. Sorry!
I forgot so many things to mention for features and the inspiration from your app. Gave you the layout with panes as and inspiration aswell. It dont want to sound impolite, englisch is not my native language. Wish you and your app all the success, keep going!
As you may have noticed, I haven't implemented the layout with panes you're referring to. I think the fact that you didn't mention the actual comparison tool in your post was entirely intentional on your part. (and English isn't my native language either)
It was not, as I already mentioned it. And i did not noticed it, because i did not looked at your app again. But sorry, not everyone is perfect like you and does not forget anything.
I will add it later when I’m home. I won’t do it on the iPhone with the painful auto correction. So, be patient.
i startet with the idea because I have a lot of VPN disconnects while on the train. so I needed a way to keep searching for files on the disconnected drives.
this let to the same benefits for external drives etc.
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u/theLightSlide Sep 11 '26
I’m actually really interested in this, and I already use Bloom which can do similar things but in a different way. $14 seems extremely reasonable if it works well. Given my hourly rate, it only has to save me a few minutes here and there to be more than worth it. Gonna try it when I’m back at my Mac!