Turfs 1.3.0

List view
Every turf can now show its files as rows — right-click → View → as List,
or ⌘2 (⌘1 back). Finder's five columns (Name, Date Modified, Size, Kind,
Tags), a fixed header that sorts on click and shares the turf's Sort By,
draggable column widths remembered per turf, and columns that drop from the
right as a turf narrows so nothing ever scrolls sideways. The list is the
icon grid with one column and a row is the icon cell in a second layout, so
selection, keyboard navigation, drag and drop, spring-loaded folders, inline
rename, roll-up and hover preview are the same code in both views.

Finder's right-click menu, complete
Rename, Compress (one item → name.zip, several → Archive.zip, built with
Archive Utility's own ditto invocation), Copy and Paste Item(s), Share…,
Show Package Contents, New Folder with Selection, and a Services submenu
the system fills with your Automator and Shortcuts quick actions. Items sit
in Finder's order.

Move to Display
Turfs, tabbed turfs and turf groups gain a Move to Display submenu. The move
keeps the item's offset from the top-left of the visible area, clamps it
fully on-screen, and updates the display it belongs to — a store change the
window follows, on the same path the undock handling uses.

Drops slide into place
A file dropped into a folder or tag turf appears under the cursor in the
same event as the drop and slides to its sorted slot; neighbours slide over.

Finder's keys
⌘1 / ⌘2 switch a turf between icons and list. In a tabbed turf, ⌃Tab /
⌃⇧Tab cycle tabs and ⌘⇧] / ⌘⇧[ step through them — Finder's tab keys,
replacing the old ⌘1…9. ⌘[ / ⌘] / ⌘↑ navigate a folder turf back, forward
and up. All of these now work regardless of which turf window holds
keyboard focus.

A first-run count
Turfs now counts first runs — once per Mac, anonymously: a single fetch of
a tiny file on a GitHub pre-release, whose download counter is the whole
mechanism. The welcome tour says so before it happens, and the privacy
policy describes it. Nothing about you or your Mac is sent.

Under the hood
One shared attribute cache serves both the sorter and the list rows, so a
sorted turf no longer re-reads every file's size, date and tags on every
render. Adaptive text colour now measures the frosted material as macOS 26
actually draws it, per appearance, and recolours live on a theme switch.

Fixes

• On macOS 26, titles and file names on a frosted turf over a light
  wallpaper were drawn in white.
• Renaming a file to a name already in use only beeped; it now explains and
  keeps the field open, as Finder does. A new name containing a slash was
  accepted and moved the file instead; slashes and colons are now refused.
• Move to Desktop skipped a file whose name was already taken on the desktop
  while still reporting the move; it now lands as "name 2".
• Compress, Duplicate, Make Alias, paste and drops show an error if the disk
  refuses, instead of doing nothing.

Turfs 1.2.1

Fixes:

• Turfs on an external display were moved to the built-in display when undocking, and did not come back when you docked again.
• Turfs moved to the built-in display could end up stacked on a single spot.
• A turf set up on an external display reopened on the built-in display when Turfs started.
• A turf expanded by hovering could stay open instead of rolling back up.

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Requires macOS 14 or later. Notarized by Apple.

Turfs 1.2.0

Choose what a double-click on the desktop hides

The setting in Settings → Desktop was on/off. It's now a three-way choice: Nothing, Only icons, or Turfs and icons. Clearing just the loose icons while leaving your turfs in place is the new option in the middle.

Existing preferences migrate automatically — if the gesture was on, it stays on and keeps hiding both. ⌥⌘H is unchanged and always hides everything, whatever the setting says. And a double-click always brings everything back, so turfs can't be left stranded.

Move a whole selection into a desktop folder

Select several desktop icons, drag them onto a folder, hold until it lights up, and the entire selection moves in.

This path now routes through the same transfer machinery as a drop from Finder, so it picks up everything that came with it: ⌥ to copy and ⌘ to move, copies across volumes and the iCloud boundary, the Keep Both / Replace sheet on a name conflict, and one ⌘Z to reverse the whole drop. Dragged icons also render above the folder they're heading into, rather than behind it.

Stay in Touch

A new panel under Help → Stay in Touch with our X and Bluesky, and the newsletter. It appears once on its own after you've been using Turfs for a few days, never on first run, and never while a trial has lapsed. Dismissing it is permanent; the Help item stays.

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Requires macOS 14 or later. Notarized by Apple.

Turfs 1.1.0

Open folders inside a turf. Double-click a folder in a folder turf to look inside it, with Finder's shortcuts — ⌘[ back, ⌘] forward, ⌘↑ enclosing folder — and a small toolbar while you're browsing. The title shows the folder you're in, in italic, so it's clear the turf itself hasn't changed. Files you drop land in the folder you're looking at, and quitting returns every turf to its own folder.

Dragging. Turfs and tab groups now follow the cursor smoothly instead of stepping between grid positions; they still land aligned on release. Fixed turfs jumping away from the pointer mid-drag, and rolled-up turfs snapping back to their old position when dropped.

Mission Control. New setting: show turfs as windows in Mission Control, or keep them on the desktop where Mission Control leaves them alone.

Appearance. Tab and turf labels pick a legible colour far more reliably, including frosted turfs and inactive tabs. Selected desktop icons dim when Turfs isn't the active app, matching Finder. Hovering a rolled-up turf no longer shoves your desktop icons aside.

Tag turfs. A tag turf now tells you when Spotlight's index is unavailable instead of silently looking empty, with Retry and automatic recovery. Removing a tag from many files at once asks first.

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

Turfs 1.0.5

Show Desktop

• Click, marquee, and drag your desktop icons during macOS Show Desktop — without it collapsing. Previously the first click on a Turfs desktop icon dismissed Show Desktop; now it stays open as you interact.

Spaces

• Per-Space turf placement now survives a reboot. Previously, restarting your Mac sent every turf to Space 1; now each turf returns to the Space you had it on.

Roll-up

• Dragging a rolled-up turf right after hovering over it no longer jumps away from the cursor or lags. The roll-up expand animation now snaps cleanly when a drag begins, so the cursor and turf move together.

Turfs 1.0.4

Appearance

• Copy & paste appearance across turfs, groups, and tabs — set one up the way you like, then paste that look onto others.
• Label text and tab shadows now adapt to the actual background showing through, so labels stay readable on any wallpaper or colour.
• Corner-radius now shapes tabs too, and empty/unavailable turf placeholders pick up the adaptive colour.
• Fixed: tab-group labels losing their adaptive colour, and the Appearance editor not following the last-clicked item.

Menu bar

• The status icon renders as a proper template image (with the dot as an overlay), so it looks right in both light and dark menu bars.

Turfs 1.0.3

Tabbed turfs

• Tabs now fill their row and show full titles — fixes tabs rendering as a narrow chip floating in a wider slot, titles truncating with empty space inside, and the rightmost tab on a row getting clipped when a group was narrowed.
• Rows are balanced instead of front-loaded, so a wide group no longer ends up with a few over-wide tabs on top and a crowd of narrow ones below.

Turf groups

• Group members can now be made genuinely narrow — the resize floor tracks the icon size, so a small-icon single column collapses to the icons' real footprint instead of a fixed minimum. The group refits around the smaller members.

Appearance

• The Appearance panel and its colour wheel now follow your selection: with the panel open, clicking a different turf or group updates both to that item.
• Cleaned up the sliders — removed the tick dots and aligned every slider to a consistent grid.

Turfs 1.0.2

Tabbed turfs

• The tab bar now wraps into multiple rows (up to 3) with tabs sized to fit their own titles — titles no longer get truncated, and many more tabs stay visible. The active tab's row sits at the bottom, continuous with its body.
• Fixed translucent/frosted active-tab rendering and the pinned-pin color.

Turf groups & Spaces

• Moving a turf group no longer flings its members offscreen.
• Dragging a turf no longer gets pulled into a group on a different Space that happens to sit at the same coordinates.

Menus & desktop

• New: right-click a folder → New Folder Turf from This Folder.
• ⌘⌫ reliably moves the selected desktop icon to the Trash.
• A one-time note the first time double-clicking the desktop hides everything (and where to turn it off).
• Removed the obsolete "Move to this Space" item.

Files & fixes

• Dragging several tagged files between tag turfs now tags them all (not one at a time).
• Collection turfs keep tracking files moved or renamed elsewhere.

New defaults (fresh installs)

Each turf shows on the Space where you placed it; Turfs appears in the Dock (drag files onto it to create a turf); Turfs launches at login.

Turfs 1.0.1

Grouped & tabbed turfs

• Turf groups now move as one window across Mission Control Spaces — drag a group to another Space and the whole thing travels together as a unit.
• Group turfs side by side under a framed handle: drag to reorder members, rename the group, and resize it as a unit.
• Frosted and translucent tabs render correctly — a tab's body matches its tab, the group chrome follows your global appearance, and stacked tabs no longer accumulate opacity.

Mission Control & Spaces

• Turfs are draggable between Spaces in Mission Control and stay where you put them, per Space.
• Frosted turfs keep their frosting in the Mission Control overview.
• No more launch flash; off-screen turfs are always pulled back into view.

Desktop & Dock

• Drag files or folders onto the Turfs Dock icon to create a turf — a reliable alternative to the Finder extension (turn on "Show Turfs in the Dock").
• ⌘= / ⌘- resize the icons of the focused turf or the desktop; the desktop now keeps its own icon size, independent of the turf default.

Folders, files & fixes

• Folder turfs follow their backing folder when it's moved or renamed instead of breaking.
• With file names hidden, clicking an icon no longer selects an invisible label; press Return to reveal the name and rename it.
• Fixed a spinning-beachball hang caused by iCloud status checks running on the main thread.
• Single-column turfs center their column; every turf now has a little more breathing room at the top.

Turfs 1.0.0

Turfs 1.0.0 — the first public release.

Turfs tidies your Mac desktop with live, desktop-level windows — turfs — backed by real folders or Finder tags. Group them as tabs, roll them up, and let your loose icons flow neatly around them.

• Folder & Tag turfs — a turf mirrors a real folder (live via FSEvents) or every file carrying a Finder tag.
• Collections — gather arbitrary files into a turf without moving them.
• Grouped & tabbed turfs, roll-up with expand-on-hover, per-turf appearance.
• Finder-faithful desktop — selection, rename, drag-to-move/tag/collect, spring-loaded folders, and icons that never hide behind a turf.
• Right-click → Create Desktop Turf via the Finder extension.

Requires macOS 14 or later. Includes a 10-day free trial; auto-updates via Sparkle.