Findly is a macOS menu bar utility: press Ctrl + ~ to slide a Finder-style file drawer in from any screen edge—switch to another app and it parks itself off-screen.
The first idea was to drive the real Finder as the drawer via Accessibility—complexity exploded. Switching to its own window made everything far simpler.
Its own NSPanel; one line of collectionBehavior puts it on every Space—no Apple Events, Accessibility, or private SPI.
Menu bar or global hotkeys Ctrl + ~, or Ctrl + Option + an arrow key; it appears on whichever screen the mouse is on.
Switch to another app and it auto-parks off-screen; press the hotkey again to slide it back. Drag the inner edge to resize—it remembers.
NSOutlineView gets it close to Finder's list view, plus the conveniences a drawer should have.
A macOS 26 translucent window; sidebar and file list as two rounded inset cards.
Favorites in Finder's order, plus iCloud, external drives (eject right there) and tags. Turn items on and off one by one, or switch on “Same as Finder” and it follows Finder's own settings.
Four sortable columns, grouping by kind, folders that expand in place. Return renames, Cmd + Delete trashes, Space opens Quick Look, just like Finder.
Ctrl + ~ to summon, Ctrl + Option + an arrow key to pick an edge, or click the menu bar icon (right-click for the menu). No extra permissions.
One line of collectionBehavior—summon it over any Space and full-screen apps.
Drag files straight into another app, or into the drawer, a folder or the path bar. A clashing name gets a number instead of overwriting.
Four steps, about a minute. Step 3 uses Terminal — don't worry, it's just copy and paste.
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Findly.app && open /Applications/Findly.app
Wait, what is this? Findly is a free, self-signed app that isn't notarized by Apple. I don't make apps for a living; I just build small things I find useful and good-looking, and Apple's yearly developer fee isn't in the budget… So macOS blocks the first launch. This line only removes the quarantine flag added when you downloaded it, then opens Findly. It changes nothing else, and you only need to do it once.
Use Homebrew? One line, and no quarantine step:
brew install --cask rocavence/tap/findly
Full Disk Access: The drawer browses your whole file system and the sidebar mirrors Finder favorites, so grant Findly access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access. Without it, protected folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, cloud storage) show up empty.
I wanted a file drawer I could summon on a whim and dismiss just as fast. Borrowing the real Finder's window cost too much, so I built my own—and got a far cleaner architecture for it.
Findly is tiny, open source, and free. The whole thing grew out of conversations with Claude Code. If it makes grabbing a file smoother for you too, it was worth it.
@rocavenceAuthor · GitHub