The file manager your Mac deserves.
Find anything in milliseconds, see exactly where your space went, and fly through your files from the keyboard,
in a native app that feels like it shipped with macOS.
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Finder is fine until you need to find something, figure out what's eating your disk, or move a few hundred files without a beachball. Strata keeps everything you already know: the look, the shortcuts, drag and drop, Quick Look, tabs. Then it adds what you've been missing:
- Search that keeps up with you. Every file in your home folder and Applications, searchable as you type. Once the index is built, results arrive in milliseconds, even across millions of files.
- Sizes you can trust. Folders show their real size the moment you open them, kept current as files change.
- A keyboard-first workflow. Jump anywhere with ⌘K, type to filter any folder, and keep your hands off the mouse if you like.
- File operations without fear. Pause and resume big copies, see conflicts side by side before replacing anything, and undo past operations, even after you quit.
- Made for people who build things. Git status on every file, project-aware cleanup, Open in Terminal, and previews for code, data and archives.
Type a name, use precise filters, or just say what you mean: "videos bigger than 500 MB",
"pdfs from last month". Strata understands plain English, shows you how it read your search, and answers
before you finish typing. Go further with regex: and Match Case, or ask Spotlight about what's in the files:
camera:iphone, width:>1920, duration:>10m, "photos taken with iPhone". Save any search to the sidebar and it
stays live as files change.
One shortcut opens a command palette that knows your most-used folders, the files in your index and Strata's
commands. Type acme-web/ to list a project's contents without opening a single window, or plain English like
pdfs from last week.
Prefer a search box like Windows has? Turn on Settings ▸ General ▸ Search box in the Dock: a box sits in the Dock next to Strata's icon and finds what ⌘K finds, plus your apps and documents by what they say, from any app.
Folder sizes appear the moment you open a folder, without waiting on "Calculating…". Switch to Disk Usage to see your folders as a map, then use Large Files and Duplicates in the sidebar to reclaim gigabytes in minutes.
Press Space on a folder or archive to look inside. Browse the list or thumbnails and preview files alongside, without leaving your current folder. Filter, sort, and open or copy just what you need.
Icons, List, Columns, Gallery and Disk Usage, one keystroke apart (⌘1–⌘5, in Finder's order), with ⌘+ and ⌘− for the text size in List and Columns. Turn on Dual Pane to work with two folders side by side, copy or move between them with a keystroke, or compare and sync them.
Icons · ⌘1 |
List · ⌘2 |
Columns · ⌘3 |
Gallery · ⌘4 |
Disk Usage · ⌘5 |
Dual Pane · ⌘\ |
Choose System for the Mac’s own colors, or one of fourteen presets: Graphite, Blue, Green, Purple, Sand, Teal, Rose, Amber, Slate, Sage, Coral, Plum, Ice and Midnight. Each has a light and dark palette, with coordinated colors across the file views, sidebar, inspector, toolbar and secondary windows. Native macOS controls and familiar behavior stay intact.
Find them in Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Color theme. Turn Window tint off to keep native backgrounds while using the palette for selections and accents. You can also adjust row density and the size of file names.
Want to contribute a palette? Add a JSON theme file and its translated name, then rebuild; no Swift changes are needed. The theme guide explains the format and the light/dark and accessibility checks.
- Git at a glance. File status appears beside each file, and the current branch stays in the path bar.
- Project tools in the inspector. Strata recognizes Node, Rust, Swift, .NET, Python, Go and more. Run a project's
scripts or reclaim space from build folders such as
node_modules; cleanup sends them to the Trash. - Previews alongside your files. Read code, Markdown, HTML, JSON, CSV, SQLite databases and archives in the inspector.
Connect to Server (⌥⌘K) adds connections under Servers in the sidebar.
- SFTP uses your SSH setup:
~/.ssh/config, keys, the agent and ProxyJump. Open in Terminal starts a shell on the server. - S3 supports Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MinIO and compatible services. Secret keys stay in your keychain.
- Familiar file commands work across every view, including Quick Look, copying files in and out, renaming and deleting. Moves within a server stay on that server.
Works with Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Colima, Podman and Rancher Desktop.
- Browse and copy files out. Containers appear as folders in the sidebar. Browse their files read-only, fetch contents as needed, or open a terminal inside a container.
- Manage containers in place. Start, stop, restart or pause them from the context menu or inspector. See their images, ports, mounts and Compose services.
- Control Compose stacks. Start, stop or restart a project's containers together, and open the project in your terminal or code editor.
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| Trash | In the sidebar, like Finder: Put Back (also what Finder trashed), Delete Immediately and Empty Trash, with other disks' Trashes counted. |
| Archives | Compress and extract zip, tar, 7z, rar and more, safely: nothing escapes its folder and downloads stay quarantined. Or double-click a zip to browse it like a folder and copy things out. |
| Tags | Finder's tags everywhere: colored dots, the color row in the context menu, a tag field in the inspector, a Tags section in the sidebar and tag: in search. |
| Batch rename | Replace text (or a regular expression), add text, number with a format or change case, previewed live, undone in one step. |
| Get Info | Edit comments, the app a file opens with, Locked and permissions right in the inspector. |
| App updates | Right-click apps and choose Check for Updates… to see which have a newer version, from their own update feed or the App Store. |
| Network shares | Connect to SMB, AFP, NFS and WebDAV shares (⌥⌘K), with macOS's own login and your keychain; SFTP servers and S3 buckets are covered above. |
| Cloud folders | See what's only in iCloud Drive or another cloud folder, with Download Now and Remove Download. |
| Compare and sync | Compare the two panes' folders and sync them both ways, one way, or as a mirror, verified and undoable. |
| Your shortcuts, your look | Change any menu shortcut in Settings. Choose a color theme in light or dark mode, adjust row density and set the size of file names. |
| Copy queue | Big copies run in the background with progress you can pause, resume or cancel. Conflicts are asked up front, with a side-by-side comparison and a diff for text files, and folders can be merged. Turn on Verify copies in Settings to check that every byte arrived. Moves between disks keep the original if it changed while copying. |
| History | Renames, moves, copies and deletions are recorded. Undo them later, even days later and after a restart, as long as the items are still where they were left. |
| Recents | Files you changed in the last 7 days, across your home folder, in one place. |
| Shelf | Collect files from anywhere, then drop them all at once. |
| Your sidebar | Drag folders into Favorites, reorder them, and eject disks right from the sidebar, or switch it to a tree of every folder. Windows and tabs come back where you left them. |
| Path bar | Type a path, github/acme, or just a folder's name: matching folders are suggested as you type. |
| Workspaces | Save a set of tabs and panes, with their views, and reopen them together from the sidebar, ⌘K or strata -w. Folders on network shares and servers connect again. |
| Ask Strata | Describe a bulk change (rename these photos by date taken) and review the plan before anything happens. Runs on your Mac: built-in rules handle common requests, and Apple Intelligence handles the rest. |
| Summaries | Get the gist of a PDF or document in the inspector: a short summary written by Apple Intelligence, or the key sentences without it. Nothing ever leaves your Mac. |
| Command line | Install it from Settings, then strata . opens the current folder and strata -s "invoice pdf" searches from your terminal. |
Most actions have a shortcut, and most of the ones you know from Finder work the same way. Can't remember one? Click Keyboard Shortcuts at the bottom of the sidebar, or press ⌘/.
Strata runs entirely on your Mac. The search index, summaries and AI features are local: no accounts, no tracking, no cloud. Its file index, content index and history are encrypted on disk with a key in your keychain. And a folder you browse can't run its own code just because you looked at it: Strata switches off the git features a downloaded repository could use to do that. It only goes online to check for updates (its own, if you allow it, and other apps' when you ask it to) and to the servers you connect to. Containers' and servers' files are read as you browse and cleared when Strata quits; SFTP logs in with your own SSH setup, and an S3 secret key stays in your keychain.
Read the Strata app Privacy Policy for details about local data, storage, permissions, network connections and your controls.
Strata comes in 22 languages and follows your Mac's (or pick one in Settings ▸ General). Each language is one plain JSON file in Localization: improving a translation or adding a language is a pull request, no Xcode needed. Localization/README.md has the four steps.
The README translations share this English source and are generated from catalogs. See the README translation guide to update one or add another language.
Download the latest version from GitHub Releases, open the disk image and drag Strata to Applications. It needs an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26. Releases are signed and notarized by Apple, so Strata opens like any other app. It updates itself: Strata ▸ Check for Updates…, or automatically if you allow it (updates are signed and checked before they're installed).
Or build it yourself with the Swift toolchain (Xcode or the Command Line Tools):
git clone https://github.com/cristipufu/strata-files.git
cd strata-files
scripts/build.sh release --openFor the best experience, give Strata Full Disk Access in System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security, so it can search and measure everything without asking folder by folder. Strata walks you through it on first launch.
Push a version tag and the Release workflow builds Strata on a Mac, signs it with the
Developer ID certificate, has Apple notarize it, and publishes a GitHub Release with Strata.dmg, Strata.zip, their
checksums and appcast.xml, the signed update feed installed copies check. The release notes come from
docs/release-notes/<version>.md when there is one, and the update window shows them too.
git tag v0.2.0 && git push origin v0.2.0Strata is open source under the MIT License.
Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.