Reference

Changelog

What’s new in each release. The newest is at the top.

0.1.8

Search from anywhere: ⇧⌘O opens the search box from any app, and the menu-bar panel now searches like ⌘K.
Disk Usage you can trust: scans can no longer hang on a macOS permission prompt.
Drags and menus: dropping within a window moves (hold ⌘ to copy), context menus open at the click, and Quick View's actions moved into a ⋯ menu.
Remotes show in the sidebar straight away and survive updates.
Quit always quits, and live updates never touch the inside of Photos or Music libraries.
Safer installs: the installer checks every download against its published checksum.

A real Mac app

A proper app icon, and macexplorer:// links that open the app.
Open With support for Markdown, text, video and audio. Mac Explorer registers as an alternate handler, so nothing is taken over until you choose it.
Files opened from Finder, open or Open With go to the standalone viewer (Markdown, text, media) or a browser window (folders and everything else).

Go to path

Paste any path (terminal-escaped, quoted, ~, file:// or a macexplorer:// link) into the menubar panel’s search and press ↩ to jump there.
⇧⌘T opens a Go to Path box, pre-filled from the clipboard.
⌃⌥⌘space pops the menubar panel with search focused, from any app.

Finder integration

Finder Quick Action Open in Mac Explorer and the Services item Go to Path in Mac Explorer, installed by the installer or macx quick-actions install.
Opt-in Reveal in Finder → Mac Explorer (macx defaults set --file-viewer). Hold ⌥ to reach Finder. macx defaults restore undoes it.

The macx CLI drives the app

New commands: open, go, view, version, update, doctor, defaults show|set|restore and service.

Updates

The installer now doubles as the updater: it quits the app, swaps in the new version, verifies its checksum and adds a login item on fresh machines. Update now in the banner runs it and relaunches.

Index reliability

Live indexing and periodic refresh work reliably in the installed app, every location is refreshed when it’s more than six hours old, and the engine restarts itself if it stops responding.
A location that can’t be read no longer loses its index entries.

Session restore: windows and their tabs (including search tabs and back/forward history) come back on the next launch.
Anonymous usage analytics with an opt-out in Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Privacy. See Privacy & telemetry.
Update banner: the app tells you when a new version is available.
The search engine repairs its own dependencies instead of failing to start.

Diagnostics: Send report and Reveal log in Settings. Reports are sent automatically when the search engine can’t start.