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Fast, native Mac file manager (filters, fuzzy find, 9 MB, no Electron)

Details

External ID
48814952
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Fast, native Mac file manager (filters, fuzzy find, 9 MB, no Electron)
Website domain
whimfiles.com
Launched
July 7, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
98
Upvotes percentile
0.9133811230585425
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

My Downloads folder had been left unkept for a really long time and cleaning it up using Finder was quite cumbersome. So I started creating a simple app to help me filter out and delete or move the files in the folder.It started out very basic and the filtering options genuinely helped me clean out the Downloads folder, then as I thought of more features I would like to see in a file manager I started to add them. Some of the features are:- Fuzzy go to folder/file where you only need to write a few letters of a full path, get suggestions and can jump to the correct path instantly - Hover over a file to preview an image or PDF without opening it - Dual-pane view and tabs that remember selected filters - Command palette to find actions fast - Batch rename (with regex support and presets for common operations), image conversion (HEIC/WebP/AVIF to JPG/PNG), zip creation - Bookmarks, Quick Look, single-click open, keyboard controlAnd many other small quality of life features.I used Claude Code for making the app and the tech stack is .NET/C# with AppKit. The app is compiled to Native AOT so the total app size is only around 9 MB. Since file operations are very important to get right (I don’t want to lose any important files) I put a lot of time into hardening file move/copy/delete operations. Copies are written to a temp file and atomically renamed into place. I also made a dedicated audit of move/copy/delete and verified each operation by hand.Another thing that’s important to me is apps that are privacy first so the only network request the app makes is to check if there’s a new version (this is not done at all for the trial version, the trial expiry date is enforced locally by just checking the date and trusting the user) and the only information that is sent is the current app version.The app is Apple Silicon, macOS 12+ and has a 30-day free trial with a one-time launch price of $19.99 (no subscription).

Enrichment

Theme
macOS utilities and system tools
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Dev tools
Audience
B2C
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Commercial product
Normalized one-liner
native mac file manager
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Partial Building a standard native macOS utility in Swift/SwiftUI is approachable with AI, but achieving a lightweight 9MB footprint with high-performance file system indexing and real-time fuzzy filtering requires careful systems-level optimization.

What it would actually take: The app is written in native Swift using AppKit/SwiftUI alongside macOS low-level APIs like `FSEvents` and POSIX directory iterators. The hard part is building an ultra-fast, concurrent fuzzy search engine over thousands of local files without noticeable UI latency or memory bloat, avoiding Electron/heavy runtimes to stay under 9 MB.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Terminal CLI for file management, macOS Finder, Dual pane file managers (generic)

Concerns raised: Target audience unclear - most developers use CLI, not GUI, Pricing ($19.99) may not justify value proposition, Can't configure for local vs network file handling, Cross-volume moves don't rollback if copy fails midway, Security/transparency concerns - lacks 'nutrition label' for permissions

Feature requests: GNUStep compilation support, Configurable local vs network behavior, Rollback mechanism for failed cross-volume operations, Software nutrition label showing permissions/network calls

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 148 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #22 of 149 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 245 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

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