Support

Stuck? Talk to the person who built it.

There is no ticket queue. Every message lands with me, Sochetra, and I answer them myself. Most of the time within a day.

Email me
Best for anything to do with your license key, your receipt, or a refund. Attach the receipt and I can make you a key by hand.
sochetra12.nov@gmail.com →
Report a bug on GitHub
Best for crashes, things that don’t work, and feature ideas. Others can see it and add to it.
Open an issue →
Message me on Facebook
Best for a quick question when you’d rather not write an email. Same person, same answer.
Send a message →

macOS blocked it

The first time you open Shelf, macOS may stop it with this:

This is macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe. Sonoma words it differently and means the same thing.

Nothing is wrong with the download. macOS says this about every app Apple has not notarised, and Shelf is not notarised yet. Letting it through takes about a minute, and you only do it once.

Click Done. Click it with the mouse — do not press Return. macOS has highlighted the other button, so Return throws Shelf in the Trash and you have to download it again.

macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe

  1. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Shelf into Applications. Do this first. The steps below will not stick while the app is still sitting inside the disk image.
  2. Open Shelf from Applications. The warning appears. Click Done.
  3. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll to the bottom, to Security. A line there says “Shelf” was blocked to protect your Mac.
  4. Click Open Anyway next to it and confirm with Touch ID or your password.
  5. One last dialog comes up. Click Open Anyway again. Shelf starts, and macOS never asks again.

No Open Anyway button? That line only sits in Privacy & Security for a few minutes after a blocked launch. Open Shelf again, click Done, then go straight back and it will be there.

macOS 14 Sonoma

Sonoma is quicker. Right-click — or Control-click — Shelf in Applications, choose Open from the menu, then click Open in the dialog. A plain double-click will not do it. It has to be the right-click menu.

If macOS says Shelf is “damaged”

Same cause, blunter wording. macOS is refusing to check an app it cannot verify, and the file is fine. Open Terminal from Applications → Utilities and run this one line:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Shelf.app

Then open Shelf the normal way. That line clears the flag macOS attaches to anything downloaded from the web, on that one app. It changes nothing else on your Mac.

Why the warning exists

Getting rid of it means a Developer ID from Apple, which is $99 every year, and sending each build to Apple to be scanned. Shelf is $3.99 once. When enough of you have bought it I will pay for the account and this section disappears. Until then every build lives in the open on GitHub releases, so you can see exactly which file you are being handed.

Getting started

Shelf lives in your menu bar. There is no window to open and no Dock icon to find.

  1. Start dragging a file in Finder. The shelf appears next to your cursor. Drop the file on it.
  2. Switch to the app you want to send it to. Drag the file off the shelf and drop it there.
  3. Press ⌥ Space any time to show or hide the shelf by hand.

Want to see it first? The demo on the home page runs the real shelf in your browser.

Common fixes

macOS won’t let me open Shelf.
Shelf is not notarised by Apple yet, so macOS blocks the first launch. When the warning shows up, click Done and nothing else. Then macOS blocked it walks you through the rest, for your version of macOS. It takes a minute.
The shelf doesn’t appear when I drag.
Shelf needs no permission to notice a drag, so there is nothing to switch on. Check the shelf icon is still in the menu bar, and open Settings → The panel to see where Appears is pointing — if it is set to a corner you are not looking at, that is where the shelf is. ⌥ Space brings it up wherever it lives.
⌥ Space does nothing.
Another app already owns that shortcut — Spotlight and some launchers like to grab Space combinations. You cannot rebind it in Shelf yet, so quit the app that holds it, or open the shelf from the menu bar icon or just by starting a drag.
Notch mode isn’t showing up.
The shelf lives in the notch by default, and it only lands in a real notch on the built‑in display of a Mac that has one. Elsewhere it draws its own small black tab under the menu bar in the same spot. It does not switch to a floating panel by itself — if you would rather have one, pick another spot under Settings → The panel → Appears.
My shelf is stuck on the side of the screen.
Then it was pulled out of the notch: dragging the closed notch down takes the shelf off it, and it parks on a side edge when you let go. To send it home, drag that tab off the edge and let go over the notch — a bar lights up under it while you drag, so you can see where the shelf will land. Let go anywhere else and it parks on whichever side of the screen it is on.
I dropped a file and nothing happened.
The app you dropped into has to accept files by drag and drop. Try dropping the same file straight from Finder. If that doesn’t work either, the target app is the limit, not Shelf. Also check that the original file still exists. Shelf holds a reference, so a file you moved to the Trash can’t be delivered.
The shelf keeps disappearing on me.
That is auto‑hide. An empty shelf slides away after a moment. In settings you can make the delay longer, or turn auto‑hide off so the shelf stays until you close it.
Files stay on the shelf after I drop them. Or they vanish.
Both are settings, under Settings → Dragging out. Dropping a file picks Move or Copy. Remove from the shelf after then decides whether a copied file stays. A move always takes the file off the shelf, which is why that switch is dimmed while Move is selected.
Option-click does nothing in Finder.
The first ⌥-click asks macOS for permission to talk to Finder. If you said no, Shelf shows Allow Finder in System Settings › Privacy › Automation — turn Finder on for Shelf there. Check the feature itself is on under Settings → General → Option-click in Finder too.
I lost my license key.
Go to the lost key form on the home page and type the email you bought with. Every key on that email comes back to your inbox. Check spam first, and if the form turns up nothing, your key never arrived has the way to reach me by hand.
My shelf is empty after a restart.
That is expected. The shelf is a place to put something down for a minute, not a folder, so quitting Shelf empties it and it starts empty next time. Anything you want to keep should be dropped somewhere before you quit.

Reporting a bug

Bugs live at github.com/Novsochetra/shelf-issues-tracker/issues. Look there first, someone may have hit the same thing. The more of this you include, the faster I can fix it:

  • What you did. Step by step, starting from the app you dragged out of.
  • What you expected and what happened instead.
  • Your setup. macOS version, Mac model, and whether you use notch mode, an external display, or both.
  • A screenshot or short recording if you can. It often says more than words.

If Shelf crashed, macOS shows a report. Copy the first twenty or so lines and paste them in. That is usually enough.

Your key never arrived

The key goes out the moment your payment clears, and it also shows on the thanks page right after checkout. If neither reached you, work down this list.

  1. Check spam and, in Gmail, the Promotions tab. That is where it usually is.
  2. Try the lost key form with the exact address you paid with. Every key on that address comes straight back.
  3. Still nothing? Email me at sochetra12.nov@gmail.com and attach the receipt Paddle sent you. I make a key by hand and send it back, usually the same day.

The receipt is what lets me find your payment, so it is the one thing worth digging for. If you cannot find that either, send me the address you paid with and roughly when, and I will look it up in Paddle myself. Facebook works just as well if you would rather not email.

Refunds

If Shelf isn’t for you, tell me within 14 days of buying and I will refund you. No form to fill in and no reason needed. Email me with your order number or the address you bought with, and that is it.

Uninstalling

  1. Click the Shelf icon in the menu bar and choose Quit.
  2. Drag Shelf.app from Applications to the Trash.
  3. Optional: remove the Shelf folder from ~/Library/Application Support to clear its settings.

Your files are never touched. Shelf only ever held references to them.