Folder Peek

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While I love making free apps that are available to anyone, the high volume of support requests became unsustainable. After providing the app for free for 4 years with more than 50K downloads, I made the decision to make it paid. This isn’t about revenue - it’s about managing my time more effectively by reducing the support burden to a sustainable level.

When the menu bar has no space left, macOS hides overflowing items. Try quitting some menu bar apps.

This is a macOS bug on non-Retina displays. There is unfortunately not much I can do about this.

You can create a folder that contains aliases to the files and folders you want to be included in the menu.

Create a folder to put aliases in and add that folder to the app. Make aliases for the files and folders you want in the menu and move the aliases into the folder you just made.

An alias is a shortcut to an app, file, or folder that you can keep anywhere on your Mac. Right-click an item in Finder and select “Make Alias” to make one.

Just add the “Applications” folder to the app if you want to show all your apps.

If you want to show only certain apps, create a normal folder anywhere, for example on your Desktop. Then open the “Applications” folder in Finder, right-click each app you want, choose “Make Alias”, and move those aliases into the new folder. Finally, add that new folder to Folder Peek.

See the “Can I show specific files and folders from various places?” answer.

You can create a shortcut in the Shortcuts app using the “Set Folder Visibility” action where you show only certain folders. For example, you could make a shortcut named “Start Work” which hides your personal folders in the menu bar and shows folders for your work projects. On macOS 26, you can use Shortcuts automations to trigger this shortcut at a certain time or any other condition. On older macOS versions, you can use the Shortery app for this.

You can drag & drop files directly from the menu. Press the Option key while dragging to copy instead of moving.

Press the Option key while viewing a file to reveal a “Copy Path” button.

Press the Option key while viewing an image or video to reveal a “Copy Dimensions” button.

Press the Shift key while viewing a subfolder to reveal more actions, including a sort order setting.

Make a folder to hold the screenshots and add the folder to the app. Open the Screenshot app, click “Options”, then “Other Location”, and choose the folder you just made. In Folder Peek, open the folder config, change the sort order to “Date Created”, and set “Max Items” to something like 20.

You may also want to disable the screenshot preview so the screenshot shows up in the screenshot folder right away.

A Smart Folder is a special feature in Finder that allows you to create a virtual folder based on specific search criteria. The files within the Smart Folder are not physically stored in one location, but rather are located in different areas of your computer. Unfortunately, it is not possible to add a Smart Folder to Folder Peek as the functionality cannot be replicated.

• Individual menu bar items mode: Click the menu bar item, go to the first menu item (which is named after your folder), go to its submenu, and then select “Remove Folder”.
• Single menu bar item mode: In Settings, right-click the folder to reveal the “Remove” option.

No, that is unfortunately not possible. Folder Peek is built as a system menu, and a menu cannot be kept open if it’s not focused. Instead, first, navigate to the nested folder, click to open it in Finder, and then drag & drop the file into the Finder window.

No. The app supports dragging files out of the menu, but not dropping files into it. macOS menus do not support receiving drops. To move a file into a folder listed in the app, first click the folder in the menu to open it in Finder, then drag the file into the Finder window.

No, this is not possible because of sandboxing. To use a network volume in the app, you need to either mount it manually first or use a tool like AutoMounter to keep it always mounted.

No. This is not planned.

Apps define the types they support and Folder Peek just fetches a list of apps that support opening folders. However, many apps forget to declare support for folders even though they can open them. I would encourage reporting this to the developers of the app you want to open (example report). In the meantime, I’m happy to manually add the app to the list if you contact me, but you are expected to also have reported the issue to the app’s developers.

The app developer will need to add public.folder to LSItemContentTypes in their app’s Info.plist:

<key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
<array>
    <string>public.folder</string>
</array>

Yes. Enable the “Set as the default file browser” setting in Path Finder. Folder Peek opens whichever app is the default folder handler, so once Path Finder is set as the default, it will be used automatically. Any questions about this should be asked in the Path Finder support channels.

Folder Peek opens the default app that handles folders, which is Finder by default.

• Path Finder: Enable the “Set as the default file browser” setting in Path Finder.
• ForkLift: Follow this guide.

For other apps, follow this guide, but replace com.binarynights.ForkLift-3 with the bundle identifier of the app you want.

There is a hidden setting for it. Run the following command in the Terminal app:

defaults write com.sindresorhus.Folder-Peek showFolderMoreMenu -bool false

You can show the … menu item again by pressing the Option key.

• Slightly faster access, since most users have the Dock automatically hidden and the menu bar always shown.
• File preview.
• Copy and share a file.
• View and copy image/video dimensions.
• Open a file or folder in a specific app.
• Keep folders on top.
• Sort by when the file was last accessed.
• Show the menu using a custom global keyboard shortcut.
• Limit the number of items shown in the menu.
• Shortcuts support.

• You can choose any folder and as many as you want, not just a few predefined ones and a single custom folder.
• Each folder can be individually customized.
• Sandboxed app (more secure).
• Custom menu bar icon.
• File preview.
• Copy, share, and drag & drop a file.
• View and copy image/video dimensions.
• Open a file or folder in a specific app.
• Sort files by date created, date modified, date accessed, date added, and kind.
• Show the menu using a custom global keyboard shortcut.
• Limit the number of items shown in the menu.
• Shortcuts support.

The app is for folders only. However, I have an app for exactly this: Short Run, which lets you run shortcuts from the menu bar.

See this guide.

I don’t plan to localize the app.