Release notes — Shelf for Mac

1.2.0

September 22, 2026 Build 20260922 Download on GitHub

The shelf can leave the notch now. Drag it down and stick it to a side edge. And if you are on a trackpad, you feel each part of it happen.

Pull the shelf out of the notch. Drag the closed notch down. The shelf comes away like a drop of water: it stretches, the strand thins, then it parts. Let go near the left or the right edge and it sticks there. Let go early and it springs back into the notch. To send it home, drag it back — the notch lights up like any other edge.
The trackpad taps. On a Force Touch trackpad you feel the shelf tear off the notch, an edge light up, the shelf meet the wall, and a pull give up and fall home. A file drag taps on arriving, on moving to another card, and on landing. It follows your own macOS trackpad setting, so there is nothing to switch on. On a mouse, nothing changes.

Keys work the moment the shelf opens. ⌥ Space and the menu bar item put the shelf on screen but left the keyboard behind, so ⌘A, ⌘G, ⌫ and Esc did nothing until you clicked a card. They work straight away now, and Shelf still never takes the front app’s focus.
The menu bar lost “Move Shelf Back to the Notch”. The drag already does it, so the item was a second way to do one thing.

Needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

September 18, 2026 Build 20260918 Download on GitHub

The notch opens on hover, the floating shelf rests compact, and stacks are easier to take apart.

The notch opens on hover. Rest the pointer on the closed notch and the shelf opens. Move away and it closes. Prefer a click? Settings › The panel › “The notch opens”.
The floating shelf rests compact. Hover over it and it wakes to full size. The footer with the count, AirDrop and Clear all unfolds below the cards.
⌘G is a toggle. Select a stack and press ⌘G to unstack it into single cards. Press ⌘G again to stack them back.
Pull one file out of a stack. Spread a stack and drag a card. Drop it on empty shelf space to make it a card of its own. Drop it back on the stack to put it back.
The notch badge floats by default on a fresh install.

Drag out carries the whole selection. ⌘-click several cards, then drag any one of them to Finder or AirDrop. All of them go.
Auto-hide now applies to a shelf that holds files, not only an empty one. The setting is renamed “Hides after”.
The attached badge grows out of the settled notch. It grows the same width on both sides, so it stays centred on the camera.
Stacks spread on click only. The “spread on hover” option is gone; it made the shelf jumpy.
⌥-drag is gone. A closed stack drags whole. A spread card drags one file. The Shortcuts window is updated to match.
Footer hints and tooltips follow the new drag rules.

The shelf could stay open for good after a drag lost its mouse-up. It now checks itself four times a second and repairs the stuck state.
The notch size was saved once and never re-measured. A display scaling change or a first run in clamshell left the shelf the wrong size. Every launch now measures the screen.
On a Mac with no notch, the menu bar height was read from an old API. It is now measured.
The drop zone dashes ran under the notch lip. They now keep the same gap on all four sides.
A card pulled out of a stack could not be dropped back onto it until the stack moved.
A group left with one card treated a click as “fold the stack”. It now clicks like a plain card.

Needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

September 17, 2026 Build 20260917 Download on GitHub

A polish release. Settings got a proper home, and the notch moves the way it should.

AirDrop. Drop a file on the AirDrop button to send that one, or click the button to send the cards you picked — the whole shelf if you picked none. The files stay on the shelf either way.
Settings is now three tabs. General, Dragging out and The panel. Every setting sits in a card row, so it is easier to find what you want.
The Settings window opens in the middle of the screen. It used to open off to one side. Drag it somewhere and it stays there next time.
The notch pill merges like a drop. Open the shelf and the floating count pill leans in and sinks into the notch edge. Close it and the pill buds back out. No bounce, no jump.
The tab bar holds still. Clicking a tab used to make the bar jump and the labels slide. It does not move at all now.
No flash when the notch closes. For one frame you could see the pill next to a shelf that was still wide. Fixed.

Needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

September 15, 2026 Build 20260915 Download on GitHub

The first release. Everything the home page shows is in here.

The shelf. Start dragging a file and it appears next to your cursor. Drop the file on it, switch apps, drag it back out.
Lives in the notch. On a Mac with a notch the shelf sits under it by default and slides down when you need it. Paint it any colour, and let the closed notch show the file count as a tab or as a floating pill. Anywhere else, pick a spot: near the cursor, where you last dragged it, the right edge, or the bottom.
Stacks. Drop several files on the shelf and they pile into one stack. Drag the stack to drop all of them at once, click it to spread, or hold ⌥ to pull one file out.
⌥ Space. Show or hide the shelf by hand.
Option-click in Finder. ⌥-click a file and everything selected in Finder lands on the shelf, with no drag. On by default; switch it off in Settings.
Pick cards. Click, ⌘-click or ⌘A to select, ⌘G to stack the selection, ⌫ to take it off the shelf.
Shortcuts window. ⌘ / lists every key the shelf answers to.
Auto-hide. An empty shelf slides away after a moment. Set the delay, or turn it off.
Move or copy. Dragging a file out of the shelf moves it by default; switch to Copy to leave the original where it is.
Licensing. Paste the key from your purchase email once. It works on every Mac you own.

Needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

Shelf does not update itself yet. When a new version is out, it shows up on this page and on GitHub.

Your license and your settings carry over. Nothing to enter again.