A self-cleaning shelf for everything you collect — clipboard, screenshots, files, links — plus window snapping, window previews, a notch shelf, snippets, an app cleaner, and on-device AI. One menu-bar icon instead of five separate apps.
⭐ If FlowShelf makes your Mac day easier, give it a star —
it helps other people find it (and gets us closer to a one-word brew install flowshelf).
A self-cleaning shelf for everything you copy, grab, and drag
Screenshot studio |
Notch shelf |
On-device AI |
Window snapping |
More demos at flowshelf.app.
I got tired of running a separate app for every little thing — a clipboard manager, a window snapper, a file shelf, an app cleaner, a screenshot tool. Five menu-bar icons, five subscriptions, and half my RAM gone before I'd done any actual work.
So I built one app that does all of it — native, lightweight (~7 MB), and private. Everything stays on your Mac. No account, no cloud, no Electron.
— Mahin, a solo dev trying to make daily Mac life a little less cluttered.
FlowShelf does what I actually used these popular apps for, in a single place:
| What you'd reach for | FlowShelf feature |
|---|---|
| Paste / Maccy / Dropover (clipboard + file shelf) | Shelf + Floating shelf |
| Magnet / Rectangle (window snapping) | Window snapping |
| AltTab + DockDoor (window switching & previews) | ⌥-Tab switcher + Peek |
| CleanShot X / Shottr (screenshots + annotation) | Screenshot studio |
| AppCleaner (uninstaller) | Clean |
| TextExpander (snippets) | Snippets |
| NotchNook (notch utility) | Notch shelf |
Not a 1:1 clone of each — it covers the everyday parts most people use, in one tidy, free app. The Screenshot studio in particular has grown into a full toolkit (annotate, redact, magnify, measure, beautify) — see below.
| 🗂️ Shelf | A home for everything you collect — text, links, images, files, screenshots. Search it, pin it, drag items back out. Auto-clears after 24 hours so it never piles up — or switch to Permanent history if you want a full clipboard manager. |
| 🪟 Window snapping | Hold ⌃⌥ and press arrows / U I J K / Return / C to snap the focused window to halves, quarters, maximize, or center. |
| 🎯 Notch shelf | A Dynamic-Island-style shelf in your MacBook notch (and a matching pill on external monitors). Swipe down to open, drop files in, click a tile to copy. |
| 👀 Peek | Hover a Dock icon for live previews of that app's windows — click to switch, or close/minimize from the preview. |
| 🔀 ⌥-Tab switcher | Hold Option, press Tab for a live-thumbnail window switcher across all apps. |
| 📸 Screenshot studio | Region & window capture with local OCR (Apple Vision), plus a full editor: arrows, shapes, a real highlighter, numbered steps, text, redaction (pixelate / blur / black-out), spotlight, a magnifier callout, a pixel ruler, and gradient backdrops. Plus pin-on-top, QR scanning, image combine, and before/after GIFs. |
| ✂️ Snippets | A searchable library of reusable text — signatures, addresses, canned replies. One click to copy, or grab from the menu-bar menu. |
| 🧹 Clean | Drag an app in to uninstall it — FlowShelf finds the leftovers, scores them by confidence, and moves them to the Trash (reversible). It even tells you what it couldn't remove and why. |
| ✨ On-device AI | See below. |
Plus a floating drop-shelf you can shake-summon at your cursor, and a unified dashboard tying it all together.
Powered by Apple's on-device Foundation Models — it runs entirely on your Mac. No API keys, no accounts, no subscription, and nothing ever leaves your machine. (Requires an Apple-Intelligence-capable Mac with Apple Intelligence enabled. AI runs only when you ask.)
- Ask AI — ask anything and it answers using your shelf + snippets as context.
- Summarize / Clean up / Smart title any text item.
- Ask AI ▸ transforms — Reply, Explain, Make formal/casual, Bullet points, Translate, or a custom prompt.
- Smart Search — type a natural query ("that tax link") and it finds it by meaning, not just keywords.
- Summarize my day — a friendly recap of everything you collected today.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
⌘⇧V |
Open the Shelf / search |
⌘⇧S |
Toggle the floating drop-shelf |
⌘⇧7 |
Screenshot a region → Shelf |
⌘⇧O |
Screenshot a region → OCR + Shelf |
⌘⇧D |
Open the Dashboard |
⌃⌥ ← → ↑ ↓ |
Snap window to halves |
⌃⌥ U I J K |
Snap window to quarters |
⌃⌥ Return / C |
Maximize / center window |
FlowShelf is private by design:
- Everything stays on your Mac — no accounts, no cloud, no analytics.
- On-device AI — prompts and results never leave your machine.
- Clipboard history is stored owner-only and excluded from iCloud / Time Machine backups.
- Password managers and apps you exclude are never recorded; Private Mode pauses capture entirely.
- The only network request is a once-a-day check for app updates.
- Download the latest
.dmg - Open it and drag FlowShelf into Applications.
- Open FlowShelf normally. The app is Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple.
- Grant permissions when asked — Accessibility powers Peek, the ⌥-Tab switcher, and window snapping; Screen Recording adds the live window thumbnails. FlowShelf asks only when you first use a feature that needs them.
FlowShelf keeps itself up to date automatically (via Sparkle); you can also check manually in Settings → General.
brew install --cask mahinkadery/tap/flowshelfSame signed, notarized build as the direct download. Verify any release with its SHA-256 checksum, published in the release notes.
The AI features say they're unavailable
On-device AI needs an Apple-Intelligence-capable Mac with Apple Intelligence enabled (System Settings → Apple Intelligence & Siri). One easy-to-miss catch: Apple Intelligence won't turn on unless your Mac's system language matches your Siri language — if they differ (e.g. system "English (US)", Siri "English (AU)"), set them the same and it'll enable. AI only runs when you explicitly ask.
A feature stopped working after an update (Peek, ⌥-Tab, snapping, window thumbnails)
Those need Accessibility and/or Screen Recording permission. FlowShelf uses a stable Developer ID signature so grants normally persist across updates, but if macOS drops one, re-enable FlowShelf under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility / Screen Recording.
Where is my data stored? Can I wipe it?
Everything lives on your Mac only — no cloud, no account. History is stored in FlowShelf's Application Support folder, owner-only, and excluded from iCloud/Time Machine. Use Clear in the app to wipe it, or turn on Private Mode to pause capture entirely.
"FlowShelf can't be opened"
Since 1.3.4 the app is notarized by Apple, so it should open normally. If you're on an older build or macOS still blocks it, right-click the app → Open, or allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security.
Requires the Swift toolchain (Xcode Command Line Tools are enough — no full Xcode).
git clone https://github.com/mahinkadery/FlowShelf.git
cd FlowShelf
make install # build, bundle, sign, install to /ApplicationsOther targets: make run (build + launch), make dmg (build a distributable disk
image), make clean. Contributors build with an ad-hoc signature by default.
FlowShelf.app
├── FlowShelfApp / AppDelegate – menu-bar status item, popover, wiring
├── Models / Store – ShelfItem, Snippet, persistence + 24h expiry
├── Clipboard – NSPasteboard monitoring
├── Screenshot – screencapture, Vision OCR, annotation editor
├── Shelf – floating drop-shelf + shake-to-summon
├── Notch – Dynamic-Island notch shelf (per display)
├── WindowSnap – Magnet-style window snapping (Carbon hotkeys)
├── Peek – Dock window previews + ⌥-Tab switcher
├── Cleaner – app uninstaller (scan + Trash)
├── AI – on-device Foundation Models helpers
├── Dashboard / UI – SwiftUI views
└── AX / Util – Accessibility helpers, updater, helpers
Native Swift + SwiftUI + AppKit, packaged with Swift Package Manager as a universal binary (Apple Silicon + Intel). Window thumbnails via the same window-capture API DockDoor/AltTab use; OCR via Apple's Vision; on-device AI via Apple's Foundation Models; updates via Sparkle.
Issues and pull requests are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the changelog.
FlowShelf is source-available, not open-source. You may read, learn from, and contribute to the code, but you may not redistribute, sell, or ship your own copy of the app, and the FlowShelf name and icon are reserved. Licensed under the PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0.
FlowShelf is free. Two things help a lot:
- ⭐ Star the repo — it's the biggest
boost for a solo project (and helps unlock a shorter
brew install). - ☕ Buy me a coffee if it saves you time.