Get started · v1.9.74
No installer, no kernel extension, no background daemon you can't stop. Drag it into Applications, grant Full Disk Access, run the setup wizard. Below the install steps you'll find every feature, every screenshot, and the one-line reason each one exists.
7-day free trial · macOS 13 Ventura or later · Universal binary
Four steps, takes about three minutes. Storage Studio never asks for an admin password unless macOS requires one for permissions.
Grab the universal build (v1.9.74) — a single ~40 MB DMG file. It contains the macOS app, signed and notarised by Apple.
Open the DMG, drag Storage Studio.app to your /Applications folder. Eject the DMG once the copy is done. No installer wizard, no admin password.
Launch the app. On first run macOS will ask for Full Disk Access — required so the app can see and move files outside the Documents folder. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, switch Storage Studio on, then return to the app.
The four-step wizard pairs your internal SSD with an external NVMe drive (or any second volume), confirms rsync 3.x is installed, and runs a dry-run preview before doing anything. Your 7-day free trial starts the moment the wizard finishes.
Six core surfaces. Each one has one job, and a single sentence below tells you what makes it different from the dozen utilities you've already tried.
01 · Menu bar
Lives in your menu bar. A coloured dot tells you free-space status at a glance — green, yellow, red, never modal.
Clicking the menu bar icon opens a popover with current free space on both drives, the next scheduled sync, recent activity, and one-tap shortcuts to the Tier window, Free Up Space wizard, and Preferences. No dock icon, no main window unless you ask for one.
02 · Tier window
Two-pane file browser with mirror-hover, side-specific home buttons, and pair-relative navigation. Selecting a folder on the internal SSD auto-scrolls the external NVMe pane to the matching folder.
Move and Merge actions preview every byte before they touch disk. Relocate leaves a symlink behind so apps still find their files. Symlink-loop detection prevents self-overwrites. Recent pairs are pinned and survive LRU eviction so your common workflows stay one click away.
03 · Free Up Space
A three-step recovery wizard — cache cleanup, oversize-file relocation, optional cloud-storage eviction. Each step shows you exactly what it'll touch before you approve it.
Step 1 removes Xcode DerivedData, Homebrew caches, browser caches, npm/pip caches. Step 2 surfaces files above your size floor and offers per-file relocation. Step 3 optionally evicts dehydrated iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and Google Drive cached files. Nothing happens without your explicit OK on the preview.
04 · App relocator
Move applications from /Applications to your external NVMe. Storage Studio leaves a symlink behind so Spotlight, Dock, and Launchpad never notice the difference.
Built-in refuse-list protects system-critical apps from being moved. Restoration is one click: the relocator remembers every move and can put each app back on the boot drive. A diagnostic log (MoverLog) captures every relocation for audit trail.
05 · Charts
Drive-usage history with 17 selectable time ranges, dual-axis (internal SSD + external NVMe on one chart), drag-to-zoom, hover tooltips with byte-accurate readouts.
A daily snapshot is recorded by the local daemon — never uploaded. Stack-chart, area-chart, and line-chart modes. Pause-and-export for support tickets. The same chart appears in Preferences → Advanced → Self-backup so you can see backup health at a glance.
06 · Preferences
Per-cloud-provider toggles, smart-mode that pauses heavy actions during camera/mic use, launch-at-login, schedule cadence, and a self-backup pane that preserves your config across reinstalls.
Smart-mode reads a read-only macOS flag — your audio and video are never accessed. Per-cloud toggles let you opt in to evicting iCloud while leaving Dropbox local, or vice versa. Self-backup is a manifest-driven snapshot of your settings + recent pairings stored on the external NVMe.
Download the universal build, follow the four steps above, and the 7-day free trial starts the moment setup completes. No card required.