Four views
Icons, List, Columns and Gallery, from the toolbar or ⌘1–⌘4. Icon and Gallery draw Quick Look previews of the files themselves, not the generic type icon. ⇧⌘P adds a preview pane beside the list or columns.
Free · The second app
A file browser
with a terminal.
Finder++ browses files the way a Mac app should — four views, a sidebar, Quick Look, tags, the contextual menu you already know. Then it opens a real shell, Claude Code, or Codex in whatever folder is on screen, without you typing the path again. It is version 1.2, and this page says what it still does not do.
Why it exists
The path you already
have open.
Every terminal session I start begins the same way: find the folder, copy the path, change directory, start over. The folder was already open in front of me. The window that knew where I was had no way to act on it, and the window that could act on it had no idea where I was.
Finder++ closes that gap. It is a native file browser first — AppKit views, system icons, the Quick Look and Tags the rest of the Mac uses — and the terminal, Claude Code and Codex panels open in the directory the browser is showing. Change folder, restart a panel, and it is there.
It is a separate app from Linelark Notepad, downloaded separately, and installing it changes nothing about the editor. It is here because it is built by the same person, on the same principles, and because the people who wanted a terminal that follows the file are the people most likely to want this.
Read the principles behind both appsIn this build
What it does today.
Read off the shipping build rather than a roadmap. Everything below is in the version you can download.
Folders that open in place
In the List view every folder has a disclosure triangle, so you can read what is inside without leaving where you are. Four buttons beside Back and Forward close every folder, close the deepest open level, open one more level, or open everything down to the bottom.
A terminal in the folder
A shell panel opens below the file list, already in the directory on screen, using the login shell you already use.
Claude and Codex, docked
A right-hand dock runs the claude and codex commands already installed on your Mac, each in the same folder, each restartable on its own.
Windows and tabs
Every window and tab has its own folder, history, view and terminal. They all come back when you reopen the app, and a folder or drive that has gone is replaced by the nearest place that still exists.
Moves that ask before they overwrite
A name already at the destination gets Keep Both, Replace, Skip or Stop, with Apply to All. Replace puts the old version in the Trash and remembers where, so it can be found again after a relaunch.
Undo that checks first
A move, copy, duplicate, rename, new folder, compress, Make Alias and Move to Trash can be taken back. An item you changed since is left alone until you choose Undo Anyway.
Transfers that report what happened
A move to another disk copies, checks the copy, and only then removes the original. A partial result lists what was completed, skipped, failed and not attempted.
Drag, copy and move in every view
Option copies, Command moves, a drag within a disk moves and to another disk copies. Hovering over a folder opens it.
Rename many files at once
Rename Multiple Items previews every new name and flags conflicts before anything changes, and the whole batch can be undone.
Search that leaves the folder
The toolbar field filters what is on screen — and, while you type, the folders you have opened in the list as well. The list under it offers what filtering cannot answer — names or contents, this folder’s tree or the whole Mac — and runs it through Spotlight.
Drives, servers and iCloud
Mounted disks sit in the sidebar in a stable order and can be ejected from it. Connect to Server (⌘K) opens a network share, and files that are only in iCloud can be downloaded from the menu.
A folder that keeps up
A file written by another app, a sync client, or a command in the terminal panel below appears within about half a second. No refresh.
Coming from Windows
It looks like Finder.
It moves files like Explorer.
Three things on a Mac cost a Windows habit every time. Finder++ keeps the habit — and keeps everything else where a Mac user expects it, so neither of you has to relearn the other’s machine.
- 01An address bar you can type in
Press ⌘L, or click the path trail where the crumbs are not, and it becomes a field holding the current path — completing folder names against the disk as you type. Finder gives you a modal Go to Folder prompt with no completion; this is the address bar.
- 02Cut and paste to move a file
Control-X marks the selection and Control-V moves it, exactly as it does in Explorer. Finder has no cut: it makes you copy and then press ⌥⌘V somewhere else, which is the single habit Windows users report missing most.
- 03A sidebar that opens into a tree
Every folder in the sidebar has a disclosure chevron, so you can drill down in place without changing what the main view is showing. Finder’s sidebar is a flat list of favourites that cannot expand.
Everything else is the Mac you already have: the four views, Quick Look on the spacebar, Tags, Share, Get Info and the contextual menu are Finder’s, not a reimplementation of them.
Keyboard
Hands stay put.
Standard Mac shortcuts where the Mac has one, and a Windows-style file cut where it does not.
- ⌘1 – ⌘4
- Icons, List, Columns, Gallery
- → ←
- Open and close a folder in the list
- Space
- Quick Look the selection
- ⌘L
- Type in the path bar
- ⌘F
- Search this folder
- ⇧⌘.
- Show hidden files
- ⇧⌘N
- New folder
- Return
- Rename
- ⌘D
- Duplicate
- ⌘⌫
- Move to Trash
- ⌘Z ⇧⌘Z
- Undo and redo
- ⌃X ⌃V
- Cut files, move them here
- ⌘[ ⌘]
- Back and forward
- ⌘B
- Toggle the sidebar
- ⌃`
- Toggle the terminal
Read this part
What it does not do
yet.
Not a disclaimer. These are the specific things the build does not do or has not been tested on, so you can decide whether it belongs near the files you care about.
- 01Undo is for the session
It covers move, copy, duplicate, rename, new folder, compress, Make Alias and Move to Trash, in the window where you did it, and checks each item first. The history ends when you quit.
- 02Search results are a query, not a folder
At most 1000 files come back, nothing can be created in them or pasted into them, and they are only as good as the Spotlight index behind them.
- 03Opened folders are read when opened
A change made inside a folder you have open, by another app, shows after the next reload (⌘R, or any file operation here); only the folder on screen is watched. Open All stops after 10,000 entries and leaves the folders further down closed, and it never enters a link to a folder. Typing in the toolbar field looks inside the folders you have open, not the ones that are closed.
- 04Recents, Shared and the tags are queries too
Each is read when opened and re-read on ⌘R rather than followed live, and all of them are empty if Spotlight is off or the volume is not indexed.
- 05Put Back covers what this app trashed
Items Finder trashed can only be put back from Finder, because macOS keeps their original location to itself. Listing your own Trash needs Full Disk Access, which you grant in System Settings or not at all; Settings shows whether it is on.
- 06Cross-volume moves are not resumable
They copy, check the copy and then remove the original, so an interruption leaves the original where it was. A drive that cannot hold permissions or extended attributes — FAT, exFAT, network shares — loses them, and you are told. Copying a folder with ._ files to exFAT can fail with “File exists”.
- 07Drives and servers are lightly tested
Tried against disk images and a local SMB share. Not yet against a NAS, another computer or a physical external drive.
- 08Not yet checked with VoiceOver, on Intel, or by hand on macOS 14
The app uses system controls and labels its own, but a VoiceOver and Full Keyboard Access pass has not been done. The automated tests pass on macOS 14 and 15; the app itself has not been run on an Intel Mac or on macOS 14.
- 09Claude and Codex are yours, not ours
The dock runs the CLIs already installed on your Mac, under your own account and quota. Finder++ bundles neither and carries no account of its own.
- 10It does not replace Finder
It is an app you open. It does not take over double-clicks, the Desktop, or anything else the system hands to Finder.
In more detail
The whole of it,
written down.
- Every capability Grouped, with a screenshot for the ones that matter, and dated by the version each one arrived in.
- Documentation Installing, searching, moving files safely, and the parts that are queries rather than folders.
- Every release What each one added, and what it still could not do at the time.
The part we need from you
Tell us what broke.
An app is only as good as what happens to the things it does wrong, and that has to reach the person who can fix them. The contribution page has a form for exactly this — pick Test report, and say which macOS version, which Mac, the steps you took, and what happened instead. A reproduction is worth more than a description, because it is the half that is hard.