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

In plain words

Whim is a native Mac file manager designed for efficient organization and batch operations. It features fuzzy navigation to quickly jump to folders, image and PDF previews on hover, dual-pane views with tabs, and a command palette for fast action discovery. The app includes batch rename with regex support, image format conversion, and zip creation. Built without Electron at just 9 MB, it emphasizes speed and simplicity for users managing large folders like Downloads.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

WhimFiles is a native Mac file manager built around fast, real-time filtering. Filter by type, date, and size at once, browse dual-pane, open tabs, and find anything in seconds with fuzzy Go to Folder. Native and tiny (~9 MB). One-time $19.99, no subscription, with a 30-day free trial.

WhimFiles is a native Mac file manager built around fast, real-time filtering. Filter by type, date, and size at once, browse dual-pane, and find anything in seconds. One-time $24.99.

Narrow any folder by type, date, and size all at once. Jump anywhere with fuzzy folder search, hover to preview without opening, and browse two folders side by side. No more digging through endless Finder windows. Filter your files in real time by type, date, and size, all at once. Choose from preset categories like Images, PDFs, Videos, and Documents, or define your own custom filters by file extension. Add a date range, a size limit, and a search term simultaneously. Results update instantly as you type. Toggle recursive search to look inside every subfolder at once. Open two folders side by side and work between them directly. Copy or move files from one pane to the other with a single…from whimfiles.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

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…

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  TinyFast2025 · tinyfast.app · ▲319

  I am a developer. I have been building stuff for the last 13 years. One common challenge in all my projects is compressing assets to make them as small as possible. I used to end up using online compressors, but this has a lot of privacy concerns. So, I finally set down for couple of weeks and built this simple app. I can just drag and drop assets in it and it shrinks them. It currently supports around 25 file types. I built a lot of iOS apps but this is the first time building a macOS app, so any feedback is welcome.

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  fman – file manager for programmers2017 · fman.io · ▲178

  A dual-pane file manager for Mac, Windows and Linux. Save time by quickly jumping to directories. Tailor fman to your needs with its powerful plugin system.

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  Spotlight returns nothing for words you know are in a scanned document. It is not a bug: a scan has no text layer, so there is nothing to index. How to check, and three ways to make those documents searchable on a Mac.

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  TideyJan 2026 · trytidey.com · ▲90

  Hey HN! I built Tidey because my Desktop was always a mess. The problem: Files pile up on Desktop and Downloads. Screenshots, PDFs, random downloads. You save them "temporarily" and forget about them for months. The solution: Tidey sits in your menubar and watches those folders. When you're ready to clean up, it shows you each file one by one. You preview it, then click Delete (goes to Trash) or Keep (moves to ~/Documents/Kept/, organized by year/month). That's it. No complex rules, no automation magic. Just a fast way to make decisions about files you've been ignoring.…

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  Selectric – macOS Search for Gmail, Outlook, Drive, Slack2024 · selectric.io · ▲65

  I got frustrated with Outlook, Gmail and Google drive search never being able to find anything in my Inbox or Cloud storage and decided to build a personal email and document search that works better. Selectric is a free MacOS app and currently supports Gmail, Outlook, Drive, Dropbox and Slack. The app is completely private. We index and store all data on your Mac. We also run AI models locally so no data ever needs to leave your computer. I'd love for the HN community to try us out and share feedback!

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  anf - all new finderJun 2026 · rescenedev.github.io · ▲5

  Finder, reforged — a fast, native file manager for Mac

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