# PaneStack: the Finder alternative for Mac, with up to 16 panes

> PaneStack is a Finder alternative for Mac: up to 16 floating panes, a Start screen, a Library by kind, plain-words search, PDF tools, servers and undo. From $4.99.

# The Finder alternative that puts your files on a stage.

PaneStack is a file manager for Mac. It opens on Start, with your disks, your latest files and the jobs you came to do. From there: up to 16 floating panes, a Library by kind, search in plain words, and undo for everything.

[Buy PaneStack · $4.99](https://panestack.app/buy) [See how pricing works](https://panestack.app/#pricing)

- macOS 14 or later

- Apple silicon and Intel

- No account needed

- Already bought? [Download](https://panestack.app/download)

![PaneStack's Start screen: three disks shown as rings with their free space, four one-click tiles (Organize Downloads, See what's taking space, Sort Downloads, Add a server), folders to jump back into, and recent files as cards.](https://panestack.app/assets/start-light.webp)

Start ⌘0. Screenshots on this page show a demo folder.

**16** floating panes in one window, split in any direction

**20** operations from the past day you can still undo after a relaunch

**72 ms** to list a 100,000-file folder (Mac mini, M6)

**$4.99** for the first 20 copies. One purchase, no subscription

## What Start shows you first.

Finder opens on a folder. PaneStack opens on the things you came to do.

### Disks as rings

How full each disk is, at a glance. A disk that is nearly full turns red before it becomes a problem.

### One-click jobs

Organize Downloads with a preview, see what's taking space, clean out old installers, add a server.

### Jump back in

The folders you were just in and the files you touched last, as cards with real previews.

### ⌘K to anywhere

Type a few letters of a folder, file or menu command and press Return.

## See what a folder holds before you read a single name.

Every pane is a card floating on a softly lit stage. The line under the folder's name is a **spectrum**: one colour per kind of file, as wide as its share.

- **Kind chips.** Click Pictures or Documents to narrow the folder to that kind. Click again to see everything.

- **The selection dock.** Select something and the next actions float up: open, Quick Look, rename, duplicate, new folder with selection, copy to the other pane, add to the Shelf, trash.

- **Folder sizes in the list**, worked out in the background.

- Folders

- Pictures

- Videos

- Music

- Documents

- Code

![A Documents folder in list view. Under the title, chips read Documents 8 and Folders 2 above a two-colour spectrum line. Three rows are selected and a dark floating dock at the bottom shows “3 selected” with action buttons.](https://panestack.app/assets/list-light.webp)

## Up to sixteen panes in one window.

Split right or down, as often as you like, and give each pane its own view. Drop a folder on a pane's edge to open it there.

![One PaneStack window with three floating panes side by side: Documents as a list, a folder of landscape pictures as cards, and Downloads as a list with its own kind chips and spectrum line.](https://panestack.app/assets/panes-light.webp)

### Copy across with one key

F5 copies and F6 moves the selection to the other pane.

### Linked panes

⌃⌘L walks two folder trees together.

### Scenes

⇧⌘L saves a pane layout with a thumbnail. ⌃⌘1 to ⌃⌘9 bring it back.

### Zoom

One pane fills the window, then the others come back.

## Six ways to look at a folder.

Cards, list, columns, gallery, a size map, and Mosaic, which lays pictures out whole instead of cropping them to squares.

![Card view of a Pictures folder: folder cards show a mosaic of the pictures inside with an item count and size; file cards show a preview, a coloured kind label and the size.](https://panestack.app/assets/cards-light.webp)

Cards ⌘1: folders show what's inside them.

![Mosaic view: landscape and portrait pictures fitted into justified rows, each shown whole.](https://panestack.app/assets/mosaic-light.webp)

Mosaic ⌘6: every picture whole, in tidy rows.

## Everything of a kind, wherever it's filed.

The Library ⇧⌘0 gathers pictures, videos, music and documents from your usual folders, and searches them in plain words: **“pdfs from last week over 5 MB”**.

- Finds text inside screenshots and scans, and pictures by what they show. All read on your Mac.

- Shows where a download came from.

- Remembers external disks, so you can search a drive that isn't plugged in.

![The Library: tabs for pictures, videos, music and documents with counts, a search field, and a grid of picture previews gathered from several folders.](https://panestack.app/assets/library-light.webp)

## Eight themes, each in light and dark.

Indigo, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Rose, Grape, Mint and Graphite. The accent, the stage and its glow change together.

![The same window in the eight themes, side by side in two rows: Indigo, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Rose, Grape, Mint and Graphite.](https://panestack.app/assets/themes.webp)

## A messy folder, sorted. After you've seen the plan.

Organize shows which files will go into which new folders, by kind or by date, before anything moves. Untick files, rename folders, then go. One ⌘Z puts every file back.

- Leaves alone what's in use, still downloading, just changed, or part of a project.

- **Folder rules** do it for you as files arrive: rename, tag, move, convert.

- **Batch rename** with a live preview, and **duplicates** found by content.

![The Organize window for a Downloads folder: a plan listing new folders such as Pictures, Documents and Archives with the files that will move into each, each with a tick box, and an Organize button.](https://panestack.app/assets/organize-light.webp)

## Combine, split, edit pages, shrink, make searchable.

Select PDFs, right-click, PDF. No other app to open.

- **Combine** PDFs and pictures into one, in the order you drag them into.

- **Split** into one file per page, or by ranges like 1-3, 5, 8-.

- **Edit pages:** every page as a thumbnail. Drag to reorder, turn single pages, take pages out or use one twice, then save in place or as a copy.

- **Compress** at three levels and see the size before and after first.

- **Make searchable:** scanned pages are read on your Mac and get an invisible text layer you can search, select and copy.

- **Password-protected PDFs** work too: type the password once, and what PaneStack makes from the file keeps it.

- Every one can be undone. A replaced original waits in the Trash.

![The Combine into One PDF sheet: a numbered list of three PDFs with their page counts, arrow buttons to reorder them, “3 files, 3 pages”, a Save as field and a blue Combine button.](https://panestack.app/assets/pdf-combine.webp)

## Your server, next to your folders.

Add a WebDAV, S3 or SFTP server once and it stays in the sidebar under Servers. It opens in a pane beside your own folders, and files copy, move and drag between them.

- **WebDAV:** Nextcloud, ownCloud, Synology and most NAS boxes.

- **S3:** Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, MinIO, Backblaze B2, Wasabi. Copies inside a bucket happen on the server, and files can be shared with links that expire.

- **SFTP** (beta) with your SSH keys, ssh-agent or a password.

- **Edit on This Mac** ⌥⌘O: open a server's file in its app, and every save goes back up. If someone changed it on the server meanwhile, you choose: replace, keep both, or don't upload.

- Thumbnails and Quick Look for pictures and documents on the server. Large uploads go up in parts, and uploads and downloads can be paused.

- Test the connection before you save. Passwords and secret keys go to your Keychain.

![The Add a Server dialog: three cards to choose WebDAV, S3 Storage or SFTP, with S3 Storage selected; Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2 and Other as a segmented choice; fields for region, bucket, access key and secret key on rounded cards; and Test Connection, Cancel and Add Server buttons.](https://panestack.app/assets/servers-light.webp)

## Built for the long day with files.

### Undo, even after quitting

Copies, moves, renames, organizes and syncs go into a history. The last 20 operations of the past day can still be undone after a relaunch.

### The Problems list

What couldn't be copied or changed, why, in plain words, with Retry where trying again is safe.

### Your keys, or the ones you know

Finder's shortcuts by default, a Windows-style profile (Return opens, F2 renames) and a commander-style one (F5, F6, F7). Every shortcut can be changed, and so can the buttons in each pane's header.

### Safe copies

Files are written whole or not at all, copies to external disks are read back and checked, and system folders can't be thrown away.

### A map of where space went

The size map view draws a folder as blocks by size. Click a block to go into it.

### Previews built in

Code with colours, Markdown rendered, CSV as a table, JSON tidied, and small text files edited in place.

### Archives as folders

Look inside zip, 7z, rar, tar and iso files without expanding them, and drag out what you need.

### Phones, with or without a cable

Send files to any iPhone or Android phone, or pull photos in, with a QR code over your own Wi-Fi. Plug a phone in and it appears under Phones: browse its photos, copy them over, delete the ones you're done with.

### For developers

Git status in the list, project scripts a click away, build folders cleared, and a panestack command.

### On-device AI

Ask for a file in a sentence, summarise a PDF, or get a real name for Scan 12.pdf. It runs on your Mac (macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence).

### Convert, shrink, encrypt

HEIC to JPEG, video to MP4 or HEVC, smaller copies of photos, and folders sealed with a password that opens with Touch ID, from PaneStack or Finder.

### Edit info in batches

Title, author, copyright, keywords and description for a hundred photos or PDFs at once ⌥⇧⌘I. The pictures aren't re-saved, only their info, and one Undo puts it all back.

### Size alerts

“Tell me when Downloads is over 20 GB.” Right-click a folder, set a size, and get one notification when it goes over. Click it to open the folder.

### A terminal that keeps up

A real terminal in a drawer or a pane that follows your folder, with tabs ⌘T. ⌘F searches the scrollback, ⌘-click opens links, pictures from imgcat show inline, and long lines re-wrap when the pane changes size.

### Handoff and a widget

Pick up the folder you were in on your other Mac from its Dock. A desktop widget keeps your recent folders and files a click away.

## PaneStack as your Finder alternative.

What you get that Finder doesn't have, side by side. Finder still keeps the desktop and the Trash: see [Known limits](https://panestack.app/#limits). Weighing other apps too? See [the best Finder alternatives for Mac, compared](https://panestack.app/best-finder-alternatives-mac.html).

|  | PaneStack | Finder |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A Start screen and a Library by kind | Yes | No |
| Panes in one window | Up to 16 | No |
| Folder sizes in lists, size map | Yes | No |
| Undo history for every operation | Yes, also after relaunch | Last action |
| Batch rename with preview and undo | Yes | Basic |
| Plain-words and in-picture search | Yes | No |
| Organize with a preview, folder rules, sync, duplicates | Yes | No |
| Combine, split, edit pages, compress and OCR PDFs | Yes | Combine and rotate |
| Edit titles, authors and keywords of many files at once | Yes | No |
| WebDAV, S3 and SFTP servers | Yes | WebDAV and file shares |
| Verified copies, resumable operations | Yes | No |

## Measured, not promised.

Medians of three runs of PaneStack's own benchmark tool on a Mac mini (Apple M6, 24 GB, macOS 27). Older and Intel Macs will be slower. Anyone can rerun them with swift run -c release panestack-bench.

| Test | PaneStack | Standard macOS API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| List a 100,000-file folder | 72 ms | 218 ms |
| First rows on screen, 100,000-file folder | 4 ms | n/a |
| List a 10,000-file folder | 4 ms | 21 ms |
| Re-sort 100,000 items by size | 84 ms | n/a |
| Filter 100,000 items as you type | 25 ms | n/a |
| Memory for a 100,000-item folder | 22 MB | n/a |
| Copy 1 GB + 2,000 small files, same APFS disk | 0.17 s | n/a |
| Same copy, every file read back and checked (SHA-256) | 1.3 s | n/a |

“Standard macOS API” is FileManager asking for the same four facts per file. Copies on the same APFS disk are clones, which Finder also uses, so the copy figures show PaneStack's overhead, not drive speed. Where both were measured, the bars under a test compare PaneStack (indigo) with the standard API (grey). [Full method and raw output](https://panestack.app/benchmarks.html).

## One purchase. No subscription.

PaneStack is a paid app: there's no free version and no trial. The first copies cost least, and the price goes up as they sell.

PaneStack · price by copy

$4.99 for copies 1 to 20

| 1 to 20 | $4.99 |
| --- | --- |
| 21 to 50 | $9.99 |
| 51 to 150 | $14.99 |
| From 151 | $29.99 |

One purchase covers you on 1 Mac, with a 7-day money-back guarantee.

[Buy PaneStack](https://panestack.app/buy)

Already bought? [Download PaneStack](https://panestack.app/download) and enter the key from your email.

Everything included · one licence

- Start, the Library, all six views, eight themes

- Tabs, windows and up to 16 panes per window, split in any direction

- Safe, verified copies and moves, with Undo even after quitting

- The Problems list, Organize, batch rename, tags, folder rules

- PDF tools, Edit Info, folder size alerts, duplicates

- Search by name, in plain words and inside documents and pictures; saved searches

- Named workspaces, the Shelf, compare and sync folders

- Remote servers: WebDAV, Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2 and S3-compatible, SFTP (beta), with share links, previews and editing in place

- iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, network shares, archives as folders

- On-device AI, phone transfer, the terminal, git status

- 7-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked

- One licence: you, on 1 Mac at a time

- No subscription

- Every future version included, for every buyer

- Checkout by Dodo Payments; tax and VAT worked out there

- [Refund policy](https://panestack.app/refund.html) · [Terms](https://panestack.app/terms.html) · [Privacy](https://panestack.app/privacy.html)

### Can PaneStack replace Finder?

For everyday file work, yes: that's what it's built for as a Finder alternative. Turn on “Use PaneStack for ‘Show in Finder’ from other apps” in Settings and other apps' Show in Finder opens PaneStack instead; switch it off to go back. Finder still runs the desktop icons, the Dock's Trash and Time Machine, because macOS doesn't let another app take those over.

### Is there a trial or a free version?

No. PaneStack is paid only. If it isn't right for you, the 7-day money-back guarantee gives you your money back, no questions asked.

### How do the prices go up?

By how many copies have sold: the first 20 are $4.99, the next 30 are $9.99, the next 100 are $14.99, and every copy after that is $29.99. The price you see at checkout is the price you pay.

### Moving to a new Mac?

Open PaneStack › Licence on the old one, choose Deactivate This Mac, then activate on the new one. Lost or broken Mac? [Write to support](https://panestack.app/support.html) and we'll free the licence.

### Do I pay for updates?

No. Every licence includes every future version of PaneStack. There's no subscription and nothing to renew.

### How do I pay?

Checkout is handled by Dodo Payments, the merchant of record, so sales tax and VAT are worked out at checkout. Your licence key arrives by email; enter it in PaneStack › Licence.

## Private.

No account, no tracking, no telemetry. Nothing about your files leaves your Mac. Searches, summaries, picture reading and PDF text recognition all happen on it.

### Two connections of its own

PaneStack contacts its update feed and, about once a day, the licence check. The licence check sends your key and this Mac's name. It never sends file names, paths or contents.

### Servers you add

A remote server is contacted only when you open it. Its password or keys stay in your Keychain, and files go straight between your Mac and that server.

### AI on the device

Picture and scan reading use Apple's Vision, and Ask, summaries and name suggestions use Apple's on-device model. PaneStack never uses a server model.

### Phone transfer stays local

Files go over your own Wi-Fi to a one-time address with a random secret. It stops working when you close the panel.

### Handoff is Apple's

If Handoff is on in System Settings, the folder you're in is offered to your other Macs on the same Apple Account, through Apple's Handoff. Turn Handoff off and nothing is offered. The widget reads a small list PaneStack keeps on your Mac. Maps of where photos were taken are drawn by Apple Maps, which receives the area shown.

### Logs only when you ask

Nothing is uploaded automatically. “Collect Logs” makes a zip you can choose to send, and “Report a Problem” includes system details only, never file names.

## Known limits.

What PaneStack doesn't do, or doesn't do yet, so there are no surprises.

- **Finder keeps running.** The desktop icons, the Dock's Trash and the Time Machine browser still belong to Finder, and PaneStack hands those jobs back to it. macOS doesn't let another app replace them.

- **No Finder Sync extensions.** Badges and menus that apps like Dropbox add to Finder can't load into another app. PaneStack shows iCloud and cloud-drive status itself.

- **Servers are file lists, not folders on disk.** WebDAV, S3 and SFTP open in a pane beside your folders, in every view, with copy, move, drag and drop, Organize, thumbnails, Quick Look and editing in place. Tags work only on this Mac's files, and a server has no Trash, so nothing done on it can be undone. A paused download stops at once and carries on where it stopped; a paused S3 upload waits for the part it's sending, and a WebDAV upload for the file it's on. SFTP is in beta.

- **PDF tools have edges.** Text recognition reads straight lines of print well and handwriting poorly, and the first run after an update can take up to a minute to start.

- **English only for now.** The interface is ready for translation, but no other languages are in yet.

- **On-device AI needs macOS 26 and Apple Intelligence.** On older systems, Ask, summaries and name suggestions are hidden. Plain-words search, picture search and PDF text recognition still work.

- **Some things ask for permission.** Protected places need Full Disk Access, protected files use the system's admin prompt, and the Open/Save dialog helper needs Accessibility. PaneStack asks only when you first use one of them.

- **One licence, one Mac.** A licence works on 1 Mac at a time. To move it, open PaneStack › Licence on the old Mac and choose Deactivate This Mac. Refunds are open for 7 days after you buy.

- **Not on the Mac App Store.** A sandboxed file manager would have to ask for every folder separately, so PaneStack is a direct download, signed and notarised by Apple.

## Make PaneStack your Finder alternative.

$4.99 for the first 20 copies, on 1 Mac, with a 7-day money-back guarantee.

[Buy PaneStack · $4.99](https://panestack.app/buy)