HaVe you noticed that you are always doing repetitive and useless tasks on your PC? For example, when you want to move a file to another location you always have to open the file manager and go to the folder destination before you can move the file over. What about when you want to share a photo to Twitter and find that the image is too big? You open a photo editing tool, edit/crop the photo, save it as a smaller size image, and then upload to Twitter. What if there was a way to simplify all these mundane tasks? That is what Filepane is all about.

Filepane is a Mac-only app that adds useful drag-and-drop actions to your system so you can complete tasks with a simple drag. You can easily resize an image on-the-fly, move a file to another location, convert a document to PDF and print it out, compress a file/folder, etc. Filepane cleverly detects the file type and shows different options according to the file format.

Installation

Filepane can be downloaded from the Mac app store or from the developer’s website if you are looking to test it out for seven days. After the trial period you will have to get a license key. The pricing for FilePane can be confusing, though. The Mac App Store version is priced at $9.99 and is currently having a limited time offer of $6.99. This allows you to install it on up to five different Macs. On the developer’s website the price ranges from $2.99 to $5.99, depending on the number of Macs you are going to install it on. In short, there is more flexibility and price saving when you buy from the developer’s website rather than from the Mac App Store.

If you have downloaded the trial version from the developer’s website, to install it all you have to do is drag the file to your Applications folder, and run the application from Launchpad.

Usage

With Filepane running, when you select and drag a file, you will see a small popup “Drop here” box. Simply drop your file to the box to activate further actions.

According to the file type, different actions will appear. For example, for a folder it will show “Email File,” “Airdrop” (for quick sharing), “Zip” (compress the folder), “Finder” (open folder in Finder), “Move and copy files”, and “Trash” options.

And it will create a new file sub-menu.

For images, the actions menu includes “Desktop picture” (set as Desktop wallpaper), “Convert” (to png, jpg, bmp, tff), “Upload” (to Twitter, Facebook, Message), and “open image editor” (resize image).

Filepane also works with your browser. You can simply click on any image and drag or just highlight a sentence or paragraph and drag. The “Drop here” box will appear, allowing you to save the text to the clipboard or quickly share to Twitter and Facebook.

The bad thing about Filepane is that it doesn’t put names on all its icons, so you have to guess what each icon means. Here is the list.

Preferences

When running, Filepane adds an icon to the menu bar, and you can click on it to access the Preferences. Click the Filepane icon, and you can configure whether it should launch at login, the “Drop here” box position, and whether to activate using a drag-and-drop action or via a keyboard shortcut. It also shows the time saved over the week, though it is not clear how the time is calculated and how accurate it is.

Conclusion

Filepane is one nifty tool that you can live without, but once you use it, you won’t want to do without it. Its simple, yet powerful drag-and-drop action menu is truly a time-saver and makes you wonder why it isn’t included as a default feature in the OS. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Filepane

Damien Oh started writing tech articles since 2007 and has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. He is proficient in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS, and worked as a part time WordPress Developer. He is currently the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Make Tech Easier.

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