Twin Finder

Native macOS, built from Finder’s behaviours—not a terminal file manager with a graphical coat of paint.

• List and icon views, Quick Look, tags and comments, Get Info, Open With, Trash, aliases, file extensions, mounted volumes, and standard Mac selection
• Two panes, or a single-pane layout that collapses automatically below a width you choose or capture from the current window
• Optional compact toolbar and a show/hide tab bar
• New! Optional Directory Opus-style command panel under the panes—labelled buttons, each with an Option-click secondary on its dog-eared corner, assigned from the command palette—right-click a button to change, clear, or reset it
• Independent folder, history, sorting, filtering, selection, and view for each side; Finder-style handling of apps, bundles, and other packages
• Copy the active folder to the other side, swap both folders, or reveal a selection opposite; optionally synchronise navigation, column widths, and visible columns
• Each panel watches its folder and updates live, with manual refresh. Drag and drop between panels and to and from Finder, or onto a folder row to file items inside it
• New! Drop an archive onto a pane to extract it there, or Shift-drop a folder onto empty pane space to navigate to it
• Folder rows that are symlinks or aliases resolve to their target, so a disk image’s “drag the app to Applications” shortcut works
• New! Connect to Server mounts SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, or WebDAV shares—including this Mac’s own File Sharing—through macOS, with recent servers remembered
• Mounted volumes and network shares appear and disappear, and a pane inside an ejected volume moves somewhere still readable
• Eject or unmount a selected volume from its context menu, the Volumes menu, the File menu, or the Connect to Server dialog itself—never the system drive

Move at Keyboard Speed

• Switch panes, open folders, go back or forward, jump to a path, and extend selections. Editable path bar with breadcrumb segments that completes directories as you type
• New! Hover a breadcrumb while dragging a file to navigate that tab there after a beat and drop into the folder, or hover Back or Forward to undo or redo the move without dropping
• Updated One folder menu everywhere—breadcrumb segments, tab chips, and empty pane space: Open With, Open in Other Pane, Open Terminal Here, Get Info, Time Machine, copy the folder or its path, Reveal in Finder, Move to Trash. Breadcrumbs add Open and Open in New Tab for any ancestor
• Updated A Go menu shaped like Finder’s: Back and Forward, Enclosing Folder, the standard locations with Finder’s own shortcuts, mounted volumes, Recent Folders, Go to Folder by typed path, and Connect to Server for network shares
• Follow symbolic links to their targets. Bookmarks (⌘1–⌘9), frequently visited folders, mounted volumes, and clearable folder history
• Select by file extension or with * and ? filename masks, and invert selections
• Updated Click-drag down the list to grow the selection—drag sideways still copies or moves; in icon view, drag from empty space to select and drag a selected icon to copy or move
• Filter or select by typing, case-sensitively if you like, or recursively across the subtree—matches stream into the pane as they’re found
• Search inside files from the same filter bar: Spotlight-backed results and a bounded local fallback appear in place with relative paths, live progress, and a final match count
• Turn a filter into a persistent colored highlight rule that follows files from folder to folder
• Quick Palette fuzzy-searches commands, bookmarks, folders, volumes, and history—including Filter Files and Search Contents—and remembers recent searches

Tabs, When You Want Them

• Per-pane tabs (off by default)—each tab keeps its own folder, selection, view, sort, columns, and back/forward history
• New (⌘T), close (⌘W), close others (⌥⌘W), close to the right, close all, cycle by keyboard (⌘⇧] / ⌘⇧[), reorder by dragging, or merge into the previous tab
• Pin a tab at the head of the strip; close commands including ⌘W step over it until you unpin—a held ⌘W clears unpinned tabs while pinned ones slide by
• Unpin from the chip, the context menu, or by dragging the tab out past the pinned block; drag one in to pin it
• Sort Tabs by Name—pinned and unpinned runs independently, so the pinned block stays put
• Reopen Closed Tab (⌘⇧T) restores one of the last ten from either pane—position, folder, history, and selection intact—or pick any from Recently Closed Tabs
• Rename a tab—it survives a merge, and resets to the folder’s name on request
• Drag a tab to the other pane to move it, or hold Option to copy it; a pinned tab arrives pinned. Drag a tab out of the window and the chip drags exactly like the folder from Finder, onto an editor, Terminal, or the Dock
• Updated Drop files onto a tab to move or copy them into that folder—the chip highlights like a folder row, hover a moment to bring it forward, current tab stays put
• Updated Right-click a tab to act on its folder—Open With, open in the other pane, open Terminal there, get info, Time Machine, copy it or its path, reveal, trash—ahead of the tab chrome: rename, pin, sort, close, move, and merge
• New tabs open beside the current one, not at the far end of the strip, and inherit its view options; Open in New Tab on a multi-item selection opens every folder picked
• Tabs showing same-named folders are told apart by the nearest ancestor folder that differs
• Tab bar appears automatically when a pane has more than one tab, or always via a setting; tabs scroll, with edge controls that reveal and jump to hidden tabs
• New! Save both panes’ tabs as a named tabset, and load one back
• Updated A tab whose folder is deleted or whose volume is ejected is closed—the last tab in a pane still moves somewhere readable
• Open tabs, order, pinned state, and the active tab restore on relaunch, dropping any whose folders no longer exist
• Open in New Tab reuses a tab already showing that folder; ⌘T always opens a fresh tab on the current folder—the same split Safari and Finder make. Optionally adopt Finder windows as new tabs, with the same reuse

Serious File Operations

• Create, open, rename, duplicate, copy, move, and trash files and folders in either pane, or gather a selection into a new folder
• Renaming preselects up to the last dot, replacing the stem and leaving the extension—Finder stops at the first dot and hands you half a screenshot’s name—with optional single-click rename
• A multi-item selection opens in full: every document launches, the first folder fills the current tab, the rest open behind it
• Batch rename: find/replace, prefix, suffix, case transforms, and sequential numbering—before, after, or renumbering existing numbers—with a live preview
• Cut, copy, and paste follow Finder’s menu titles, and cut files dim until pasted
• Copy then decide: ⌘V pastes a copy, ⌥⌘V moves the same clipboard files; Paste Exactly always copies
• Copy To and Move To take a destination name or path—completed as you type, or picked in an open panel
• Conflicts offer replace, keep both, or skip, with an optional warning before changing a file extension
• Long moves and copies show live byte progress on the file’s row—a pie in list view, a bar under the icon—so multi-item jobs track one real total
• Move sources dim like cut files, and every file a transfer touches—source or destination—is protected until it finishes: rename, delete, duplicate, compress, and convert all skip it
• A toolbar button on the pane files left from lists each job’s progress and bytes copied, with a Cancel that stops cleanly; aggregate progress also draws across the Dock icon
• Same-volume copies clone instantly on APFS; a cross-volume move removes the source only after the copy has fully landed
• Hold Option in the menus: Get Info → Show Inspector, Rename → Batch Rename, Copy → Copy as Pathname, Paste → Move Item Here, Move To → Copy To, Make Symlink → Make Hard Link, Move to Other Pane → Copy to Other Pane
• Move to Trash with Put Back, Empty Trash, or optional immediate deletion
• An operation on an ungranted folder offers the open panel and retries, not a bare permission error
• Undo and redo for supported filesystem changes, with progress for long-running operations
• New! Download from the web: copy a link and choose Download from Clipboard, or drag one from your browser onto a pane or folder row—it lands with live progress and cancellation, and undoes to the Trash
• Create ZIP archives—or Compress To a chosen name and destination—and expand archives with your preferred app
• Disk images offer Compress rather than Expand—2UP doesn’t mistake them for expandable archives
• Make Finder aliases, symbolic links, and hard links—and inspect or edit a symlink’s target
• Unsandboxed Operations blocked by ownership rather than by the sandbox hand off to Finder for Touch ID or a password prompt, and Empty Trash reaches every volume

Browse Your Way

• Sort by name, extension, kind, size, or date, with folders-first and natural ordering—remembered per tab across relaunches, with a default for new tabs and panes
• New! Show View Options: a floating Finder-style panel for the active tab—view, sort, grouping, text or icon size, columns, hidden files, and folder sizes; apply to every open tab or save as defaults for new ones
• Updated Each pane’s front tab, path bar, and status bar share one tint—accent on the active side—and the inactive pane recedes when the window loses focus
• Light, Dark, or system appearance, ISO or system date format, an alternate app icon, and resizable, configurable list columns
• Mounted volumes show their own drive artwork, including a disk image’s custom icon
• Keyboard navigation keeps the cursor on screen in both views, scrolling the minimum needed—like Finder
• Adjustable list text size, and an icon-view zoom that snaps to whole-column boundaries—one icon more or fewer per row, via keyboard or a status-bar − / + slider
• Show or hide hidden files, with a visible/hidden breakdown; always show file extensions or respect Finder’s per-file setting
• Listings keep going past folders you aren’t allowed to read, not burying readable rows under a permission error
• Status bar with a Finder-style item, selection, filter, or search count and the volume’s free space—one figure per volume, so two panes on the same disk always agree

New! Time Machine

Finder hands restores to the Time Machine app: you leave, fly through a stack of windows, and return with the file. 2UP does it in place—select a file or folder, older copies arrive in a sheet.

• Time Machine… sits on the File menu, the file context menu, and every folder menu behind breadcrumbs, tab chips, and empty pane space—wherever you’d reach for a folder
• Every unique older copy 2UP can find, gathered from backup disks and the local snapshots macOS keeps between them, listed with its date and size
• Restore over the original, or Keep Both to land the older copy beside it, no matter how many versions back it sits
• Restore bins the current version rather than overwriting it, so Finder’s Put Back returns it if the older copy wasn’t the one you wanted after all
• Unchanged versions are collapsed—a file untouched for a month lists one entry, not thirty near-identical ones
• Restores run through Time Machine itself, not a snapshot copy, so the recovered file carries none of the backup metadata that makes later deletion awkward
• The command stays greyed until an older copy is actually found, and never lights up for a folder your backup excludes
• Works in the Mac App Store build too, through the same Application Scripts helper that Finder Adoption uses

Understand Every File

• Updated Preview with Quick Look—including HTML files and documents drawn by other apps’ preview extensions—rotate images inside the preview, or open Finder’s Get Info
• 2UP’s own floating inspector tracking the selection: kind, size, location, dates, permissions, tags, alias targets, image or media metadata, and a kind breakdown for multiple selections
• View and edit Finder tags and comments; edit octal POSIX permissions and extended attributes, with a hex view for binary values
• Updated Calculate folder sizes—for a selection or every visible folder, remembered per folder—early-exiting like Finder’s: a cached total is reused while the folder’s date is unchanged, so revisiting a big folder is instant
• Always show package sizes even when per-folder calculation is off; clear the size cache or reset every folder to Finder’s defaults
• Copy paths and filenames, reveal items in Finder, and Open With or Always Open With to choose the app for a file
• Every context-menu action also lives in the menu bar, so any command can take a keyboard shortcut

Built-in Image, PDF & Media Tools

• Convert images between common formats, replacing the original or keeping a converted copy; scale, rotate, and flip, with smooth or nearest-neighbour resampling for pixel art; strip EXIF and GPS metadata, or remove backgrounds
• Recognise text and read barcode and QR payloads; extract every frame of an animated GIF or APNG as PNGs
• Combine images into a PDF, and merge or split PDFs
• Extract audio, or convert it to WAV, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, or M4A—AAC at 128, 160, 192, or 256 kbps, or ALAC lossless—at a chosen sample rate
• Save a movie poster frame, build a contact sheet of evenly-spaced video frames, or extract those frames as PNGs; transcode video to 1080p, 720p, 480p, or half size, in H.264 or HEVC, or convert to an animated GIF or APNG
• Copy SHA-256 or MD5 checksums to the clipboard, or write them straight into a file’s Finder comment
• All without leaving the file manager, launching a separate editor, or waiting on a round trip

Works with Your Mac

• Act on selected files with any installed macOS Service, Automator, or Shortcuts workflow; offer 2UP’s Compress, Recognize Text, and Copy SHA-256 as system Services in other apps and Finder
• Reveal in Finder, Finder Get Info, and Open With sit alongside 2UP’s own inspector
• Updated Add any number of Open with apps in Settings ▸ Apps, matched to file types you choose—empty means any file—shown inline or in an Open in submenu; Expand uses the first app covering archives
• A searchable Uniform Type Identifiers reference in the Help menu, with autocomplete for types as you add them
• Customise the file context menu, run your own scripts, or open Terminal at the active folder; install an example script and open the scripts folder without leaving the app
• Unsandboxed Open a script whose Get Info says Terminal into a Terminal window

Finder Adoption

Adoption hands Finder’s windows over to 2UP. Works in the Mac App Store build through a helper script in the Application Scripts folder, Apple’s sanctioned mechanism for sandboxed apps.

• Adopt your top Finder windows as 2UP’s panes, preserving complete selections—including hidden and newly revealed items
• Optionally turn extra windows into bookmarks, adopt new Finder windows automatically, or adopt them as new tabs rather than navigating a pane in place
• Optionally close Finder windows after adoption, or bring 2UP forward when Finder takes focus, ignoring Finder’s default windows if you like
• Automatic adoption recovers when Finder is launching or busy
• The helper script usually installs itself silently, with an open-panel grant as the fallback, and Install and Remove buttons in Settings always show what’s installed

Good Citizen

• Native SwiftUI app with no third-party frameworks, accounts, subscriptions, analytics, or advertising
• Updated Nothing is uploaded anywhere—2UP touches the network only to fetch downloads you ask for and to let web-rendered Quick Look previews draw
• The Mac App Store build runs fully sandboxed, with app-scoped security bookmarks and guided, revocable Home-folder access; dropping items into a folder outside the granted area asks for access, not failing silently
• Optional Full Disk Access status check for protected folders such as Mail and Messages, with a direct link to the right macOS settings

Optimised

• Only 2 MB app download size
• Only 100 MB base memory footprint

How 2UP Compares With The Competition

“✓” means the feature is presented as built in by the app’s official documentation.
“–” means it isn’t documented there; external tools or plugins may still provide it.