# Storage Studio — full documentation > Tiered storage utility for macOS. Pairs internal SSD with a second drive (external NVMe, SSD, or any cloud account) and treats both as one workspace. Cross-platform transfers, Registered Transfers with one-click revert, metadata-preserving Archiving. Site: https://storagestudio.us Publisher: Techtonic Systems Media and Research LLC Source of truth: https://storagestudio.us/manual/ Each section below corresponds to one page in the public user manual. The markdown is the same content shipped inside the macOS app's Help window — single source of truth. --- # Install & first launch Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/install # Install & first launch Storage Studio unifies your Mac, external drives, cloud accounts, and devices into one intelligent, collaborative space — you move, sync, share, and reclaim storage, and everything is reversible. An on-device assistant, Tuhi, guides you, and Bridge and Collab Sync connect your storage across your own devices. Freeing up space is one capability, not the whole picture. *All your storage. One studio.* It's distributed as a single notarised app for Macs with Apple silicon — there is no installer wizard, no kernel extension, and no hidden background process you can't stop. ## 1. Download the DMG Grab the latest build from [storagestudio.us/download/latest.dmg](/download/latest.dmg). It runs on Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or later); Intel Macs can keep using version 4.17.1, the last version for Intel. The download is roughly **40 MB**. It contains a single application bundle, signed and notarised by Apple. Your browser may flag the download briefly while Gatekeeper verifies the signature — that's expected. ## 2. Drag to /Applications Open the DMG. Drag **Storage Studio.app** into the **/Applications** shortcut shown alongside it. Eject the DMG once the copy completes. There is no admin password prompt at this stage. You can keep the app in **~/Applications** instead if your environment doesn't allow writing to **/Applications** — both work. ## 3. Grant Full Disk Access The first time you launch Storage Studio, macOS will ask for **Full Disk Access**. This is required so the app can: - See files outside the Documents folder (otherwise it cannot tier anything useful) - Move applications between drives - Read health information from external fast drives Open **System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access**, flip the switch next to Storage Studio, then return to the app. Storage Studio picks up the change on its own within a couple of seconds — no relaunch needed. **You can skip it, and you'll be asked again if it's ever needed.** Skipping isn't a once-and-for-all decision. Whenever your Mac actually refuses Storage Studio a file — while it's measuring your disk, moving a folder, or clearing something — a notice appears in the bell, and opening it explains what was blocked and what got left out as a result. It's a notice you can dismiss, never a window that takes over your screen, and a run that hits hundreds of blocked folders raises one notice rather than hundreds. Storage Studio tells three situations apart: - **Never granted** — the plain ask above. - **Granted, and your Mac has stopped honouring it.** This genuinely happens: your Mac ties the permission to the exact copy of the app it was granted to, so updating or repairing Storage Studio can quietly drop it. You're told that's what happened rather than being told you never granted it, and switching it off and back on in the list restores it. - **It can't tell.** If your Mac doesn't answer in time, Storage Studio assumes the answer is no and says the permission couldn't be confirmed. It never treats "I don't know" as a yes, and it never holds up the app waiting for an answer that may not come. It also only offers this remedy where it would help. A few folders belong to another app and are off-limits to everything, permanently — those are reported as refused rather than sending you to System Settings to change a setting that wouldn't change the outcome. ## 4. Register and start your free trial Before the setup below, a one-time screen starts your **free trial**. There's no credit card and nothing to pay — just a few basic details to get going: your **full name**, your **email address**, and your **country** (picked from a list). Then you **verify your email**: we send a **one-time code** to the address you entered, you type it back in, and your free trial begins. You'll need an internet connection for this step, since the code arrives by email. These details are used only to set up and support your trial, to send that verification code, and to email a couple of friendly reminders so your trial never lapses by surprise — no spam, and nothing sold on. Your files never leave your Mac; only these basic registration details are sent, to start the trial. If this Mac has already used a trial, there's nothing to fill in — the app says you're all set and continues. ## 5. Run the setup wizard The four-step wizard: 1. **Detect drives.** Lists every connected volume and lets you pick your external fast drive (or any second volume). 2. **Pair folders.** Pick a folder on your internal SSD and a matching one on the external drive. 3. **Check readiness.** Confirms everything Storage Studio needs is in place. The transfer engine is built in and ships inside the app, so there's nothing for you to install. 4. **Preview.** Shows exactly what the first move would do before doing it. Confirm and you're ready to go — your free trial is already running from the registration step above. If anything fails, the wizard explains what's missing and offers a single retry rather than burying the error in logs. ## Updating is automatic You don't have to download and re-drag anything to update. If Storage Studio is running and you mount a **newer** installer disk image — one that's genuinely more recent and verified by Apple — the app updates itself in place and relaunches on the new version right away. No "quit first, then drag to Applications" dance. This only ever happens for a real, Apple-notarised build that's newer than what you're on; an older or unverified disk image is ignored, so mounting a stale copy can't downgrade or replace your app. The free SS Bridge companion app updates the same way. --- # Home & Tuhi Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/home # Home & Tuhi **Home** is the first thing you see when you open Storage Studio. It's built to answer one question instantly — *am I OK on space, and if not, what do I do?* — in plain English, with one tap to put things right. ## The verdict A single line at the top tells you where you stand: *"Your Mac has plenty of space"*, or a clear nudge if it's getting tight. No percentages to interpret, no dashboards to decode. ## The Tuhi Ask box Right below the verdict is the **Tuhi** Ask box, **powered by Apple Intelligence**. Type a question — "what's using all my space?", "how do I sync to my S3 account?", "is everything OK?" — and Tuhi answers from your Mac's real storage and points you to the right screen. Everything stays on your device. See [Tuhi — your storage assistant](/manual/assistant) for the full picture. ## Run Tuhi The big **Run Tuhi** button is the one-tap way to free up space. It clears caches and rarely-used files, reclaims old local backups, and keeps your cloud files online-only — all on its own, with **live progress**. It's smart, safe and preview-first; see [Tuhi & Free Up Space](/manual/free-up-space) for exactly what it does and how to drive each step yourself. ## Live status and stats - A **live status line** shows what's happening right now in plain language ("All systems normal", "Tuhi running…"). - **Storage gauges** for your Mac and your external drive show free space at a glance. - **At-a-glance stats** — last clean-up, next clean-up, total freed all-time, and how many automatic rules are active. - A **storage-over-time chart** shows how your free space has trended. The full view lives in [Storage Charts](/manual/charts). ## More you can do A strip of quick links opens the deeper tools when you want them — Big Apps, What's Using Space, Data Parking, Data Transfers, and Usage Over Time. ## The top bar - **Home / Apps tabs** switch between this view and the [Apps window](/manual/apps). - A **More** menu opens everything else — Data Transfers, Local Snapshots, Preferences, and the rest. - An editable **keyboard-shortcut keycap** lets you set the shortcut that summons the Apps grid from anywhere (default ⌃Space). ## Full Disk Access prompt If Storage Studio doesn't yet have **Full Disk Access**, Home shows a banner with a **Grant Access** button. Tapping it walks you straight to the right place in System Settings — without it, the app can't see or move most of your files. See [Install & first launch](/manual/install) for the details. --- # Tuhi — your storage assistant Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/assistant # Tuhi — your storage assistant **Tuhi** is the conversational assistant on the Home screen, **powered by Apple Intelligence**. Type a question into the Ask box — "how much space do I have?", "how do I sync to my S3 account?", "is anything failing?" — and Tuhi answers in plain English, then points you to the right screen with the exact steps. ## What Tuhi can help with - **Your storage right now** — free space, what's using the most room, how much you've freed over time. - **Storage Studio's features** — what Tuhi, moving, offloading, Data Parking, snapshots, transfers and Data Transfers do, and how to use them. - **Cloud questions** — connecting and syncing iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon S3 (and S3-compatible services like Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2 and Wasabi), FTP and SFTP. - **General Mac storage** — what "System Data" is, why your disk looks full, purgeable space, caches, big files and more. - **Checking on things** — "is everything OK?", "what's running?", "did the clean-up run?" — answered from what's actually happening in the background. Every answer that points to a feature includes a one-tap button and the steps to get there yourself, so Tuhi works as a guide, not just a search box. ## On-device and private Tuhi runs **entirely on your Mac** with Apple Intelligence — your questions and files never leave your device. It answers from your Mac's real storage and never guesses your numbers. Tuhi greets you by time of day when you open the conversation, keeps a private history you can clear any time, and lets you select and copy any answer. > The conversational answers require macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence enabled. --- # Support — getting help Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/support # Support — getting help When you need a person, Storage Studio has a support desk built right in — no separate email app, no hunting for an address. Tuhi helps you start a message, and the whole back-and-forth stays in one place inside the app. ## Contact Support There are two ways to reach the team: - **Just ask Tuhi** — say "contact support", "open a ticket", or "I want to talk to a human", and Tuhi opens a message for you. - **Use the menu** — open the More menu (•••) → Help & Support → Contact Support. Either way a **ticket form** opens, **pre-filled and fully editable**, so you see exactly what will be sent before anything leaves your Mac: - **Your message** — describe what's happening in your own words. - **What to include** — simple toggles attach your Storage Studio version, your macOS version, and an **optional diagnostics summary**. You can **preview exactly what the diagnostics contain** before sending, and they **never include your file names or the contents of your files**. - **Your email** — the message is sent from the email you registered with, shown read-only so replies always reach you. **Nothing is sent until you tap Send.** Until then, everything on the form is yours to change. If you describe a problem Tuhi can't fix, or a background task keeps running into trouble, Tuhi offers an **"Open a support ticket"** button that pre-fills the useful details — you still review it and choose when to send. ## My Support — track your tickets Open **My Support** from the More menu (•••) → Help & Support to see everything you've sent and its status. Open any ticket to: - **Read the whole conversation** — your messages and every reply, in order. - **Reply** right in the app. - **Close** a ticket when it's answered, or **reopen** one if the problem comes back. - **Rate the experience** with a quick emoji rating once the ticket is resolved or closed. When support replies, a **notification** tells you there's a new message waiting. ## Who you're talking to, and what's private - Support always appears as **"Support Team"** with a short reference code — never a personal name or email address. - Replies also arrive by email and thread neatly back into the conversation in the app, so nothing gets lost. - The only things shared are what you can see on the form: your message and whichever version and diagnostics details you chose to include. Diagnostics are always redacted, and your files — names and contents — are never part of a ticket. --- # Pair your drives Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/pair # Pair your drives A **pair** is the relationship between a folder on your internal SSD and the matching folder on your external fast drive. Storage Studio enforces the pair boundary on every move, merge, and recovery operation. ## What pairing does for you - Moves preserve hierarchy from the pair root down. - The Data Parking window's two panes mirror each other when paired — clicking a folder in the left pane auto-scrolls the right pane to the same relative path. - Free Up Space only considers files inside a pair, never your whole disk. - App relocator targets the paired fast drive automatically. ## How to pair Open **Data Parking → Pair menu** (gear icon in the toolbar). Choose the two roots. Pairs are saved on your Mac and survive reboots and drive unmounts. You can have multiple pairs. Each can be enabled, disabled, or pinned to the Recents list independently. ## How to un-pair Right-click any pair in the Pairs menu and choose **Forget**. Un-pairing does not move any files; it only removes the relationship. --- # Transfer or back up your drive Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/transfer # Transfer or back up your drive Once your drive is set up, the menu-bar popover's **More → Drive** section gives you two safe ways to copy everything onto another external drive. > **Where did "Choose Drive" go?** It only appears during first-time setup. > Switching an *active* drive that way would leave every relocated app and > folder pointing at a drive that's no longer there, so once you have a > working drive it's replaced by **Transfer Drive** and **Backup Drive**. ## Transfer Drive vs Backup Drive - **Transfer Drive** copies your whole working folder to a new external drive, verifies it, then **switches over** — re-pointing every relocated app and folder to the new drive and making it the active one. - **Backup Drive** makes the same verified copy but **leaves your current drive active**. It's a point-in-time clone you can keep as a safety copy. In both cases your **old drive is never modified or deleted**. After a transfer it stays behind as a complete fallback until *you* decide to erase or repurpose it. ## Picking a drive Only **external** drives are listed — your internal disk is never an option. If nothing suitable is connected you'll see a large **No Drive Available** message; plug a drive in and press **Refresh**. Before anything copies, Storage Studio checks the destination: - It's an external drive (not your internal disk or a network share). - It's formatted **APFS** or **Mac OS Extended** (HFS+). - It has **enough free space** for everything on your current drive. - It isn't **already** a Storage Studio drive for this Mac. A quick read/write **speed test** also runs. If the drive is slow, or only usable with cautions, you're shown exactly why and asked to **confirm** before continuing. A drive that can't be used (internal, network, too small) can't be started at all. ## While it runs A live sheet shows the **percentage, transfer speed, time remaining, and the file currently being copied**. You can **Pause** and resume, or **Cancel** (which removes the half-finished copy on the new drive — never anything on your current drive). The copy is handled by the background service, so: - You can **close the window or quit Storage Studio** and it keeps going. - It **resumes automatically** if a drive is briefly unplugged or your Mac sleeps. Reopen the window to watch progress again. ## Finishing a transfer When the copy is verified, Storage Studio **inspects it for completeness** before changing anything. If everything checks out, it re-points your links to the new drive — asking **once for your administrator password** only if some of those links live in a protected place (for example, relocated apps in `/Applications`). If you decline, or the inspection finds a problem, nothing is switched and your current drive stays active. A backup simply finishes with a **Reveal Backup in Finder** button pointing at the copy on the other drive. If anything goes wrong at any stage, your current drive is left exactly as it was — Transfer and Backup only ever *add* data to the new drive. --- # Data Backup Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/data-backup # Data Backup **Data Backup** keeps safe, restorable copies of the folders you care about — your Documents, a project folder, anything you choose. It's **versioned** and **incremental**: every time a file changes, Storage Studio saves a new point-in-time version, and nothing is ever overwritten in place. If you need last Tuesday's copy of a file — or a whole folder as it stood a month ago — it's still there to restore. ## Where your backups go Pick a destination once and Storage Studio takes it from there: - **Another drive or folder** — an external disk is ideal, especially a fast SSD. - **A connected cloud account** — any account you've already added in [Data Transfers](/manual/accounts) can be a backup destination. If you're backing up to the cloud, **Amazon S3, Backblaze B2 and Azure** are the fastest choices. **Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive** work too, but those services deliberately slow down (throttle) large uploads, so a big backup takes noticeably longer there. Each Mac keeps its backups in its own folder, named after the computer, so several Macs can safely share a single cloud account without stepping on each other. ## Everything is encrypted - **Cloud backups are always encrypted on your Mac before anything is uploaded.** The cloud provider only ever sees scrambled data — never your actual files. You set a **passphrase** once, the first time you back up to the cloud. - **Backups to a local drive are encrypted automatically** — there's nothing to set up. > **Keep your cloud passphrase safe.** It's the only key to your cloud > backups. If you lose it, those backups **cannot be recovered** — not > by you and not by us. Write it down somewhere secure. The passphrase belongs to the whole **backup set**: if you later change where your backups go, the passphrase stays the same. Changing the passphrase itself is a separate, deliberate action that asks you to type a confirmation, because a new passphrase can't read versions saved under the old one. ## "That backup passphrase didn't match." This means the passphrase saved on this Mac no longer unlocks that cloud backup — usually a mistyped passphrase during first setup. The warning always shows a **Re-enter passphrase…** button: type the passphrase the backup was *actually* encrypted with. Storage Studio then **checks it live** against your backup — you'll see *"Checking… a cloud backup can take a minute"* — and tells you **right there in the dialog** if it doesn't match, keeping the dialog open so you can try again. A passphrase is only saved once it's been confirmed to actually unlock the backup, so the correct one sticks. When it matches, Storage Studio reconnects to your existing versions **without deleting anything**. If the passphrase is genuinely lost it can't be recovered (the backup is encrypted with it), and the only option left is **Delete & start fresh**. Storage Studio **won't keep retrying a passphrase that didn't work**. It stops and waits for you to re-enter the right one, so a single mistype never turns into a loop of failed attempts churning in the background. And once a version has actually been **saved** to the destination, Storage Studio never mislabels it as a passphrase problem — even if the safety check that runs right afterward gets interrupted. It just shows the backup as saved and re-checks it on the next run. ## It runs itself Once a folder is set up, you don't have to remember to back it up: - Storage Studio **watches the folder** and quietly backs up changes as they happen. - When you open the app it **catches up** — it finishes any backup that was still in progress and captures anything that changed while the app wasn't running. - Backups are **resumable**. If one is interrupted — you close the lid, lose Wi-Fi, quit the app — it simply continues from where it left off next time, and **never re-sends data it already has**. This survives a restart, and even a reinstall. ## First backup vs. the ones after Your **first** backup is the big one — it has to copy everything once. After that, each backup only sends what actually **changed**, so they're quick. Uploads run several at a time and are compressed to save space and time. For a large first backup, an **external SSD** or **Amazon S3 / Backblaze B2** will finish far sooner than Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. A first backup to a **cloud** destination (such as Google Drive) uploads your files as many small encrypted pieces, and the cloud adds a little delay to each one — so that **first** upload of a large folder can run for a long time, potentially hours. It is **not stuck**: it keeps working in the background and resumes exactly where it left off if it's interrupted, or if you quit and reopen the app. While that first upload runs, the backup set shows a clear notice explaining this, so you know it's making progress rather than frozen. ## Restoring — versions and files Click **Versions…** on any backed-up folder to see **every version** Storage Studio has kept. From there you can: - **Restore a whole version** — the folder exactly as it was at that point in time. - **Restore specific files** — pick just what you need. Either way, you choose **where** the restored copy lands, and Storage Studio **never overwrites your current files** — the restored items come back alongside what you already have. Older versions are **thinned out over time** so your backup doesn't grow forever: recent changes are kept closely, then daily, then weekly, then monthly copies further back. A backup is only marked **Protected** once an **integrity check** has confirmed it can actually be restored. ## Honest status, always Each folder shows exactly where it stands, in plain English: - **Not backed up** — nothing saved yet. - **Backing up…** — a backup is running. - **Checking…** — verifying the backup is sound. - **Protected** — backed up and verified; you're covered. - **Needs attention** — something needs you. It explains what's wrong and offers the fix. - **Paused** — backups are on hold until you resume them. ## Delta X — Delta Trust, Delta Drive and My Drive **Delta X** is the storage side of Storage Studio as a whole, and it is three things: - **Delta Trust** — your backups, on storage we run. Nothing on your Mac can delete or overwrite what has already been backed up. - **Delta Drive** — your working files, on storage we run. - **My Drive** — the same working drive, on storage you already own. **Delta Drive and My Drive are one product with two backings, not two products.** Same screens, same sidebar, same sharing, same disk in Finder, same site in a browser — what changes is whose bucket the files are in. One is live at a time on a Mac, and the heading says which. **Delta Trust is separate from both, deliberately.** Your backups do not move when you change working drives, and a working drive is never a substitute for them. **The Delta Drive tab** is always at the top of the main window. If you have a drive — including one you've switched off — it is your drive: it says *Reading your drive…* while it opens, and only calls a folder empty once it has looked. If you don't have one yet, it shows what Delta Drive does and three ways in: **See plans**, **Use storage you own** (My Drive on S3-compatible storage), or **Restore it with your recovery kit**. **My Drive needs only Storage Studio.** An active Storage Studio **trial or licence** is enough — no Delta Trust, no Delta Drive plan. Setting it up sends an 8-digit code — to the email your Storage Studio licence or trial is registered to (a different address can't be used) — which works only on the Mac that asked for it. Use that address to open My Drive in a browser or set it up on another Mac. Buy a licence on that Mac later and the drive comes with you. We email you whenever another Mac is added — reply straight away if it wasn't you. **Set up My Drive in four steps.** 1. In Storage Studio, open the **Delta Drive** tab and choose **Use storage you own**. (Already on Delta Drive? Open **Storage** and choose **Connect storage you own…**.) 2. **Confirm your email** with the 8-digit code we send — always to the email your Storage Studio licence or trial is registered to. Enter it on the same Mac within 15 minutes. No code? Check your junk folder, then **Send a new code**. 3. **Connect your storage** — Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces or any other S3-compatible storage: the bucket, its region and a pair of access keys. We write a small test file and delete it again before anything is saved. 4. **Use it** — in the app, in Finder, and at storagestudio.us/drive, signed in with the address from step 2. On another Mac, repeat steps 1–2 with the same address. **Switch drives.** Open **Delta Drive → Storage**. Under **Your drives** you'll see Delta Drive (if your plan includes it) and each storage account you've connected — up to three — with the one in use marked. Press **Switch to this** beside the one you want. One drive is live on a Mac at a time and the heading says which. Switching copies no files and loses nothing: each drive keeps its own files, folders, search and settings, and your backups don't change. **Disconnect** stops using a drive without deleting anything; **Reconnect** brings it back. The Storage page on the web does the same. **Removing a drive of your own** is on the **•••** menu beside it, and each option asks first: **Empty and set up again** deletes what Storage Studio put there and recreates the starting folders; **Remove our data and forget the key** deletes what Storage Studio put there and forgets your keys, leaving the bucket and anything else in it; **Destroy this drive** also removes the bucket at your provider. **If your trial or licence ends**, My Drive is **paused**, not removed: nothing in your storage is touched, but it can't be opened on the web and anything you shared is paused; on your Mac you can only disconnect or remove it. Reactivate and it carries on. After six months paused we forget the storage keys you gave us (with an email two weeks before) — never your files; reconnecting just asks for the keys again. Fair-use limits apply: up to 3 storage accounts, a cap on connection attempts per hour, and up to 50,000 files indexed per drive on a trial. **Sharing works on My Drive** exactly as on Delta Drive, with or without Delta Trust. Each share belongs to the drive it was made on; if that drive is switched off, disconnected or paused, people you shared with see "This share isn't available right now" — never another drive's files. **Bought Delta Drive later?** Storage Studio offers to **move My Drive to Delta Drive** (Delta Drive → Storage, on the Mac or the web). Your files stay in your own storage — nothing is copied — and your folders, notes, comments, favourites and shares carry over untouched; Delta Drive's own storage becomes available alongside it. **Not now** changes nothing. ## Delta Trust and Delta Drive Delta Trust is storage we run for you. It comes in two halves that share one amount of space: - **Delta Trust** — your backups. Nothing on your Mac can delete or overwrite what has already been backed up, for a set number of days. Not a program, not someone who takes over your Mac, and not us. That is what makes it safe from ransomware: the protection cannot be waived by whoever is holding the keyboard. - **Delta Drive** — your working files, which you can add to, download, share and delete. The two are kept apart on purpose. A backup you can delete is not a backup, and a drive you cannot delete from is not a drive. **Where a backup goes.** On any backup card, the Destination menu lists Delta Trust and Delta Drive first, under *Included with Storage Studio*, because they come with your plan and need no account of your own. Below them are your own choices: a folder on a drive, or a cloud account you have already connected. **Backing up into Delta Drive.** You can point a backup at Delta Drive instead of the vault. Storage Studio makes a folder called **_Backup** in your drive and keeps the versions there — encrypted the same way, opened by the same recovery kit. It is not the vault, and the difference matters: in Delta Trust nothing on your Mac can remove what has already been backed up, while the _Backup folder sits beside your own files and can be deleted like anything else you keep there. Delta Drive is the convenient second copy; Delta Trust is the one that survives something going badly wrong. **A second copy, somewhere else.** Your vault lives with one storage company. Where the plan offers it, you can ask us to keep a second copy with a different company and pay for the space it uses. It survives the first company having a bad day — an outage, an account problem, a region going away. It is not a second vault (same encryption, same recovery kit), it does not add to the ransomware protection (that comes from the lock on the main copy), and it costs what storing the same bytes twice costs. The copy runs on our servers, so nothing is uploaded twice from your connection. Turning it off stops the charge and stops new writes; it does not delete what is already there. **Your recovery kit.** Setting up prints 24 words that are the only way into your vault. Keep them somewhere safe and away from that Mac. We cannot look them up, reset them, or recover them for you — the same fact that keeps your backups readable only by you. **Using storage you own.** (No plan needed for this — see *Set up My Drive in four steps*, above.) Delta Drive is included with your plan and needs nothing set up. If you would rather keep your working files on storage you already pay for, **Storage → Connect storage you own…** points the drive at an S3-compatible bucket — Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces, Backblaze B2, E2E, or a server of your own. You give it a bucket, a region and a pair of keys; we write a small test file and delete it again before saving anything, so a refusal is a real one and tells you what your provider said. Your keys are stored encrypted and are never shown back to you. We only ever read and write under **one prefix inside the bucket you name**, so anything else in it is untouched — and removing the drive only ever deletes inside that prefix. **The two drives share nothing.** Whichever drive is live has its own files, its own index, its own Recent, Analytics and Activity, its own linked folders, its own retention settings and its own local cache on each Mac. Switching between them moves no data and loses nothing: the other drive's contents stay exactly where they are, and switching back finds everything as you left it, with nothing to set up again. **What is different on your own storage.** It is yours, which is the point and also the trade-off. Anything holding your keys can delete it — including you, by mistake. It is not protected the way Delta Trust is: Delta Trust holds a credential you do not have, which is exactly why nothing on your Mac can erase it. Keep using Delta Trust for the copy that has to survive a bad day. Old copies of a file are kept only if **you** have versioning switched on at your provider — the Versions screen reads that setting and tells you which it found, because it changes what they bill you and is not ours to turn on. **Switching it off.** **Storage → Disconnect** puts the drive to sleep without deleting anything: the bucket keeps its name, the index keeps its rows, your folder settings and retention rules stay, and the keys are left where they are. While it is off, no screen lists or downloads anything and no background work touches it. Reconnecting needs nothing set up again. **In a browser, you can look at either one.** The web has a **Viewing** picker at the top of the sidebar. Which drive your Mac is using and which one you are reading in a browser are separate choices — you can read Delta Drive on the web while your Mac writes to your own bucket. The picker marks whichever one your Mac is using. **Three ways in, all the same files.** The Delta Drive window on your Mac, Finder — where the drive appears like a disk — and any browser, signed in with the email address your licence was issued to (for My Drive, the address you confirmed when you set it up). There is no password: we send a one-time code that works once and lasts fifteen minutes. **The screens.** The sidebar is the same list on your Mac and on the web: **My Drive**, **Recent**, **Shared**, **Search**, **Index & notes**, **Analytics**, **Trash**, **Activity**, **Versions** and **Copies** — plus **Security**, on the web, where two-step sign-in lives. On your Mac the menu bar's **More (•••) → Delta-X** opens any of them directly. **The folders you start with.** Every drive begins with **Documents**, **Desktop**, **Pictures**, **Shared** and **Team**. The first three match folders your Mac already has, which is what makes keeping a copy of them one click. These five cannot be removed — they are what your backups and shares point at — but everything inside them is yours to delete, and **Empty this folder…** clears the contents and leaves the folder. **Keeping a folder from your Mac here.** Open Documents, Desktop or Pictures in Delta Drive and, while it is empty, it offers **Keep a copy of my Documents here** (the same switch is on the folder's right-click menu and on the Copies screen). Nothing is copied until you press it; after that the copy is kept up to date, and turning it off leaves what is already there. **Link Folders.** Connect *any* folder on your Mac to a folder in your drive — **Add ▸ Link a folder…** — and choose how it is kept: - **Available online only** — the files live in Delta Drive. Your Mac keeps only what it needs to list them, so they take no space here and open from any browser. - **Available offline only** — the files stay on your Mac and are **never uploaded**. Delta Drive shows their names, sizes and dates so you can see what is there from anywhere; the contents are reachable only while that Mac is on. - **Both, in sync** — a full copy in both places. Uses the space twice, and survives either one going away. Change the mode at any time from the folder's menu or the Copies screen. **Nothing is deleted on either side** when you change it or unlink it. It only ever goes one way — deleting something on your Mac does not delete it from the drive. **Browsing.** Three views (**Icons**, **List**, **Details** — Details with sortable column headings), a **Sort by** menu covering Name, Kind, Size and Date modified, a clickable breadcrumb trail, and a folder tree that slides up from the bottom. Folders always sort first. **Search** looks through everything Storage Studio has seen on this drive — names, kinds, sizes and dates only; we never read inside your files to build it. **Badges** on each row say where an item actually is: *Online only*, *Ready to read* (a copy is here from when you last opened it, and will be tidied away), *Always on this Mac* (kept on purpose, works with no network), plus marks for shared, versioned, linked and commented. **Opening a file** opens it in the app that owns it and saves your changes straight back — **Save a copy…** is there when you want a detached copy instead. An edit never overwrites a newer copy: if the file changed somewhere else while you had it open, your version is saved beside it under a name that says where it came from, and you are told. **Putting things in and taking them out.** **Add ▸ Files… / Folders…**, **New folder**, and — in a browser — dragging things in from your desktop. Uploads keep going when you close the window, go in pieces so a dropped connection carries on, and show their own progress and speed. Rename, move, copy and **Move to Trash** are on the right-click menu; the background of a folder has its own menu about *that folder*. Removing something moves it to the trash, where **Put back** returns it to exactly where it was. Nothing in the trash expires on its own. **Index & notes.** Everything on your drive in one grid, with the actions on the rows. Lenses narrow it: *Largest files*, *Duplicates* (byte-for-byte identical contents, proven matches only), *Orphaned* (nothing changed in over a year — a date, not a judgement), *No note yet*, *Has a note*. A **note** is a short private label you write on a file or folder; it is searched alongside names, and **nobody you share with ever sees one**. **Recent.** Signing in on the web opens **Recent**, and the Delta Drive window on your Mac has the same screen. It asks one of three questions, and **Recent by** chooses which: **Added** (what arrived), **Updated** (what changed — something added last year and edited this morning belongs here, not under Added), and **Opened** (what was last opened or downloaded, *including by anyone you have shared it with*). Nothing about an opened file has to have changed, which is why the other two miss it — and if you have sent somebody a file and want to know whether they have looked at it, this is the screen that says so. Narrow it by kind, by how recently, or by name; sort by date, name, size or kind either way round; and on your Mac draw it as icons, a list, or details with all three dates side by side. Folders are never in the list: a folder's date changes whenever anything inside it does, so they would sit at the top permanently and tell you nothing. **Versions, and how long.** Two settings, not one. **Keep old versions** decides whether a folder's history is kept at all; **how long they're kept** is *Forever*, *a number of months*, or *until a date*. Both are inherited from the folder above, and the screen says which folder a setting came from. A folder can be set **shorter than the one it sits in, never longer** — the longer options are simply not offered, with a line saying why. Three months is the shortest we offer; a year is the longest fixed window. The Versions screen shows how many old copies exist, the space they use, how far back they go, and which files are holding the history. Shortening the window is a decision to delete something, so it tells you what would go and roughly how much space that frees before you save. The current copy of every file always stays. If your history has never been counted the screen says so rather than reporting zero, and **Count them now** counts it on the spot. **Analytics.** What each half of your plan holds, what your old copies use, what you have moved in and out over 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or a year, and how much of your plan that adds up to. Charts read out every line when you hover a day. Underneath: where the space is by folder, your largest files, what nobody has opened, files with identical contents and what keeping one of each would give back, and what has not changed in a year — dates and facts, not judgements. Every row leads somewhere. The figures come from a measurement taken once a day, so the charts fill in as the days pass; history cannot be worked out backwards. **Activity.** Everything done in your drive, newest first — sign-ins that worked and ones that did not, folders opened, files added, downloaded and binned, notes written, shares created and withdrawn. Each row says roughly where the request came from: **we record the country and city, never the address itself**. **Copies.** How many copies of your data exist, and where. How big your main copy is and how many days it is locked for, whether a second copy is on, and every folder from your Mac that is being kept in Delta Drive — the built-in ones and every Link Folder — with what is true of each right now and a **Copy now** for any of them. It ends with the sentence people get wrong: a folder kept in Delta Drive is a real second copy *and* it sits beside your own files, so you can delete it. Delta Trust is the one nothing on your Mac can touch. **Favourites.** Right-click anything and choose **Add to favourites** to pin it to the sidebar; favourites belong to the drive rather than to one browser, and follow the file if you move or rename it. **Right-clicking empty space.** The background of a folder has its own menu, about *the folder you are in* rather than about a selection: create a folder, add files, paste, select everything, refresh, share it, comment on it, how long its old versions are kept, and its details. **Dragging.** Drag a file or folder onto another folder to move it, hold **⌥ Option** to copy instead, and drop onto the breadcrumb trail to move something up a level. Dragging files in from your desktop still uploads them. **Sharing.** Share a file from Delta Drive with the people you name — only those addresses — and choose how long it lasts: **1 day**, **7 days**, **30 days** or **90 days**. Every share expires on its own; there is no "forever", and no link that shows your files to whoever finds it. The people you name sign in with a code emailed to them, which creates no account and no password; the code works once and lasts fifteen minutes. Throwaway addresses are refused as you create the share, naming the address. You can see who opened a share and what they downloaded, and withdraw it at any moment — anyone signed in stops immediately. **What they can do.** Five levels, set for everybody on a share or for one person: **Read** (open and download), **Comment** (and leave comments), **Read / Write** (add, rename, move and bin things inside what you shared — anything binned goes to *your* trash, not theirs), **Reshare** (pass it on), and **Owner**, which only becomes available once that person has actually opened the share. Read / Write and above all include commenting. Under **Permissions** on a share, each person's own row starts at **Same as the share**, so raising the share raises everyone you never singled out; set one specifically — higher or lower — and that sticks. Somebody passing a share on can never make it wider than what they were given: never more than the item they hold, never a higher level than their own, and never past the day your share ends. A share somebody passed on appears in your list, marked with who made it, and you can withdraw it like any other. **What they see.** A real Delta Drive containing only your share: folders they can walk into, icons, list and details views, sorting, search inside the share, a details panel, and uploads when you allowed them. They never see where the files sit in your drive — a share of "Clients/Acme/2026 Audit" appears to them as "2026 Audit", with nothing above it. Everything anybody has shared with that address arrives in one place, a folder per person, so they sign in once and find it all together. What a recipient never sees: your notes, your version settings, your favourites, your trash, who else you shared it with, and whether you keep a file on one of your Macs. Anything they bin goes into *your* trash, which they cannot reach. **Comments.** A conversation attached to a file, visible to everyone who can see that file, with reactions and timestamps. A comment cannot be edited once posted — you **withdraw** it, and the thread says so where it was. You can withdraw your own; as the owner of the file you can withdraw any comment on it. Six reactions are available, and hovering one says *who* reacted. Notes are a different thing and stay private — nobody you share with ever sees one. The owner of a file can export its comments to Word, with who said what, when, and who reacted. **How much lives on your Mac.** Three answers, changed at any time: **Always keep on this Mac** (chosen per folder — a real copy, kept up to date, works with no network), **Keep a copy while I'm using it** (a file you open stays for a while — a day up to ninety — then goes), or **Online only** (nothing kept, every file fetched when you open it). "Free up space now" clears the kept copies without touching the drive itself. The same menu holds **Refresh what's shown** and **Rebuild my storage…**, which makes anything missing at your storage provider and reconnects your Mac to it — it adds what is not there, leaves what is, and never deletes a backup. **Plan and billing** live in Settings → License, beside your Storage Studio subscription. --- # AI access (MCP) Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/ai-access # AI access (MCP) **AI access** lets AI assistants — such as Claude Desktop and other MCP-compatible tools — **read** what Storage Studio knows about your Mac, so their answers are grounded in your real storage instead of guesswork. When it's on, an assistant can see: - Your **storage status** — how much space is free and how things are trending. - **What's using space** on your Mac and your external drive. - Your **Data Backup** sets and the versions kept for each. - The **accounts** you've connected in Data Transfers. - **Recent activity** — what Storage Studio has been doing in the background. ## Read-only, always AI access can **only read**. It can never change, move, delete, or back up anything — no assistant connected this way can touch your files, your settings, or your backups. It's a window in, not a lever. ## Private by design - It runs **entirely on your Mac**. Nothing is exposed to your network or the internet. - It's **off until you turn it on**, and one switch turns it back off. - In the default mode, a connecting app needs your **access key** before it can read anything. ## Turning it on Open **Settings → Connections** and turn **AI access** on. There you'll find everything you need: - **On / Off** — the master switch. - **Access mode** — choose **Require an access key** (the default) so only apps that have your key can connect, or **Open on this Mac** to allow any app running on this Mac to connect without a key. - **Access key** — copy it to share with an assistant, or regenerate it at any time. Regenerating immediately stops anything using the old key. - **A ready-to-paste config snippet** — copy it straight into your AI tool's setup. The snippet is **safe to share**: it doesn't contain your key. The key is read from Storage Studio itself, so pasting the snippet somewhere never leaks your access. ## Two ways to connect - **A direct local connection** — for tools that connect straight to Storage Studio on this Mac. - **The standard MCP setup** — for **Claude Desktop** and similar tools that expect the usual MCP configuration. The panel gives you the right snippet for each; pick whichever your assistant supports. ## What is MCP? **MCP** stands for **Model Context Protocol** — the open standard for connecting AI tools to the apps and data they help you with. Because Storage Studio speaks MCP, any assistant that also speaks it can read your storage picture through the same simple setup. --- # Storage Profile — your storage DNA Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/storage-profile # Storage Profile Open it from the **More menu ••• → Storage Profile**, or the **Storage Profile** card on the Home screen. It's one long screen that reads your Mac from quick system signals and shows its "storage DNA", with **Tuhi — powered by Apple Intelligence** — turning it into plain English. Everything is measured on your Mac — nothing personal leaves it. ## This Mac is a… A persona — Developer, Media Keeper, Creative Pro, Document Worker, Archivist, Light User, or All-Rounder — with a short story about how the Mac is used, and a live **Tuhi** insight (powered by Apple Intelligence) that reads your profile and suggests the single most useful next step — with a plain-English fallback when Apple Intelligence is off. ## What you actually work on The small set of files you've opened recently — your real working set — versus everything you store (for example, "76 files in the last 30 days out of 665,000 stored"). Grouped by **category**, with the folders you work in most, and an expandable list of the files themselves: name, location, when last opened, and a reveal-in-Finder button. ## What's stored, and where it lives Your files by category and size (tap **Compute exact sizes** for exact per-category bytes), and how your storage splits across this Mac, your external drive, and the cloud — with the cloud share drawn from your accounts' **real usage**, not an estimate. ## Biggest space-users — and freeing cloud cache The largest files on this Mac right now, measured by the room they **actually take up on disk**. Cloud files that are already online-only aren't counted, so the list reflects what's genuinely using your Mac rather than files that live in the cloud. Each row has a one-tap action to reclaim its space: - For **iCloud Drive** files kept on your Mac, **Free up** evicts the local copy in one tap — the file goes online-only and the space comes straight back. It stays safe in the cloud; this is never a delete. - For **Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive**, macOS doesn't let apps free those files directly. Storage Studio reveals the file in Finder and points you to the provider's own **Remove Download** — the same online-only result, done the way macOS requires. ## Connected cloud accounts Every cloud service linked to this Mac, with each account's real usage read live from the provider. Once analyzed, each account also shows its file-type mix, how much you've touched recently, and how much is online-only (already off your disk). iCloud and other synced folders are measured too. Analysis runs automatically in the background and is cached for a day; very large accounts are sampled. ## Your storage over time, and the app's footprint The free-space and lifetime-saved charts (formerly the separate "Storage Charts" window) now live here, along with **Storage Studio's own footprint** — a live graph of how light the app stays: its memory, CPU, system load, and its on-disk size split into the app, its caches, and its data. Your files are never counted in that figure. ## How light the app stays Storage Studio is built to stay out of your way. It caps itself to a small share of your Mac's available processor and memory, and its background indexing works the way Spotlight does — quiet while you're busy, quicker when your Mac is idle, on power, and cool. A **Performance** control here lets you choose how much flourish the app shows: - **Automatic** (the default) reads your Mac's free resources and live conditions and picks the right level on its own — full effects on a capable, idle Mac, easing to something lighter as things get busier. - **Rich**, **Good** and **Light** let you fix the level yourself, from full live charts and animations down to a plain, static interface that uses the least. When your Mac comes under real pressure — it's running hot, memory is tight, or there's almost no spare processor — Storage Studio eases off and **pauses its background work automatically**, staying alive in the menu bar and picking up again the moment things recover. It never competes with what you're doing. --- # The Data Parking window Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/tier # The Data Parking window The Data Parking window is the main day-to-day surface. It's a two-pane file browser sized to feel like Finder, with extras that only make sense when you're working with paired drives. ## Layout - **Left pane:** internal SSD side of the active pair. - **Right pane:** external fast drive side of the active pair. - **Middle column:** action arrows — Move (→ / ←), Merge (with conflict policy), and Relocate (move + shortcut). ## Folder sizes Every row shows what it actually holds. For a folder that means everything inside it, at every depth — measured as the room it takes up on disk, which is the same as the room you get back by moving it. The number in the list is the number you're deciding on. - **Sizes fill in as they're worked out.** Measuring a large folder means reading through all of it, so Storage Studio does it quietly in the background at a pace that leaves your own work untouched. Rows fill in from the top, and a folder still being counted shows a spinner — never "0 bytes", because an uncounted folder must never look like an empty one just before you move it. - **A "≥" in front of a size** means part of that folder couldn't be read, so the figure is a minimum rather than a total. - **A dash instead of a size** appears for folders in a cloud account. Getting a real total there would mean a long series of requests to the provider for every row on screen, so Storage Studio doesn't pretend to a number it hasn't got. - **Hidden files are included** — they take up real space and they move with the folder. - **The selection total adds up only what's been measured**, and says how many folders are still outstanding instead of under-reporting. Refresh re-measures a folder from scratch, for when something deep inside it has grown. ## Sorting Sort either pane by **Name**, **Size**, **Date modified**, or **Date created**. Picking the key you're already on flips the direction. Folders group above files whichever key you choose, and anything whose size or date isn't known yet sorts to the end in both directions — unknown isn't the same as small, or as very old. Your choice is remembered. ## Mirror-hover When a pair is active, hovering or selecting an item in either pane auto-scrolls the other pane to the matching relative path. This lets you "see both sides" of any file without breaking your focus. ## Side-specific Home Each pane has its own **Home** button that returns to the pair root. A center **Home both** button does both at once. When unpaired, Home goes to your user folder. ## Pair-relative paths Drilling into a subfolder is "pair-relative" — the destination side mirrors your depth automatically. A move from your **Documents/Work/Q3/Renders** folder lands in the matching subfolder on your fast drive, at the same relative depth — not back at the pair root. ## Actions - **Move** — physical move + delete source. Confirms if the destination exists. - **Merge** — copy files into an existing destination folder. The policy sheet asks Merge (default) vs. Override. - **Relocate** — move the file then leave a shortcut at the source. Apps and scripts that reference the old path keep working. Loop detection prevents the app from copying a file onto its own shortcut. --- # Cloud accounts Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/accounts # Cloud accounts Storage Studio can move data between your Mac, the paired fast drive, and remote servers. Every remote is configured once in the **Cloud Accounts** window and then becomes available everywhere — in the **New Transfer** picker, in the Data Parking window's path bar, and to any job you schedule. ## Open the manager From the popover, click **Cloud Accounts** (the cloud icon with the green count badge). The badge shows how many accounts are currently configured across all providers; it includes every type, not just Google. ## Supported providers + account limits To keep things sane, each provider has a cap: - **Google Drive** — up to 5 accounts. - **Google Photos** — up to 3 accounts. - **S3-compatible** (AWS, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO, custom) — up to 10 accounts. - **FTP** — up to 10 accounts. - **SFTP** — up to 10 accounts. - **Local folder alias** — up to 5. Lets you give a path a nickname so it shows up as a remote in the picker (handy for network shares mounted via Finder). Each row in the Add Account picker shows a "used / cap" badge so you can see your headroom. At-cap rows dim and are unselectable until you remove an existing account. ## Adding an account 1. **Cloud Accounts → Add Account.** 2. **Pick a provider.** Caps update live; you can't pick a row that's at its limit. 3. **Enter a nickname.** Used in transfer paths and shown in the picker. Use a different nickname per account (e.g. `personal-drive`, `work-drive`, `client-s3`). All accounts stay signed in independently. 4. **Fill the provider-specific form.** Each provider has its own form below the nickname: ### Google Drive / Google Photos Browser-based OAuth. Click **Open browser to sign in**, pick the Google account, approve access, and the form picks up the token automatically. One tab opens, not two. The browser doesn't redirect anywhere on the internet — it lands on a page Storage Studio serves on your own Mac just for the handshake. That page confirms **"You're connected"** and you can close it right away; if the provider refused, it says why in plain English and no account is added. If Google shows a *"This app is blocked"* page, you'll need custom OAuth credentials — see the **Advanced — custom OAuth credentials** disclosure for an in-app guide. ### S3-compatible - **Provider preset** — pick the closest match. Each preset fills sensible defaults: AWS uses `us-east-1` and no custom endpoint; R2 uses `auto` and requires an endpoint URL; the rest sit in between. - **Access Key ID** — the public part of the keypair. - **Secret Access Key** — kept in the encrypted credential vault (see below). Strength-gated. - **Region** — preset per provider, editable. - **Bucket** — optional. Leave blank and you'll see every bucket the key can list; fill it to scope this account to one bucket. - **Endpoint URL** — only shown for non-AWS providers. Use the URL from your provider's dashboard. - **Advanced — addressing + transfer behaviour** — toggle path-style URLs if your S3 server doesn't support virtual-host style. On by default for MinIO / Other, off for AWS / R2. ### FTP FTP transmits passwords and file contents **in cleartext**. The form opens with a red warning banner and a mandatory consent checkbox: *"I understand the risks and want to add this FTP account anyway."* Save is disabled until you tick it. If you can use SFTP instead, please do. Fields: server, port (21), username, password, optional base path. The password is still strength-gated — a weak password over plaintext is worse, not better. ### SFTP SFTP is file transfer over SSH and is the safe default. Pick the auth method with the segmented control: - **Password.** Standard SecureField with a strength meter. - **Private key.** Browse to your key file (the picker opens at your SSH keys folder with hidden files already visible). Standard OpenSSH keys and PEM files are both accepted. If your key is encrypted, type the passphrase below — also strength-gated. The key file path stays on your Mac. Storage Studio reads it directly each connection; nothing is uploaded. ## Password strength gate Password fields (and SFTP key passphrases, if you supply one) are scored on the fly. The four-segment meter under each field shows: - **Red — Very weak / Weak.** Save is disabled. Add length and mix character classes. - **Orange — Fair.** Save allowed with a hint to strengthen. - **Yellow — Good.** Save allowed, gentle nudge. - **Green — Strong.** No hint shown. The threshold is **Fair**. The check happens locally; nothing is sent off your Mac. ## Where secrets live Credentials (S3 secret keys, FTP / SFTP passwords, SFTP key passphrases) are stored in an **encrypted credential vault** in Storage Studio's private data folder on your Mac. Protected with strong, industry-standard encryption, and the key is tied to this specific Mac — so copying the vault to another Mac will not let it decrypt, by design. You can point the vault at an encrypted external volume from Preferences. Passwords are never stored in plain text: what Storage Studio reads at transfer time is always an obscured, encrypted form, and the vault is the canonical encrypted record kept alongside it. ## Removing an account In the Cloud Accounts window, select the row → **Remove**. Before it deletes anything it runs a **reference check**: if any scheduled or one-off transfers use that account, it lists them and offers to remove the account *and* those transfers together — so nothing is left pointing at an account that no longer exists. The account's saved connection is removed and the matching vault entry is purged in the same step. Your data in the cloud is untouched; you can re-add the account later. ## Your accounts in Finder's sidebar Storage Studio adds a **"Storage Studio"** entry to Finder's **Locations** sidebar — right next to iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox — with each connected account (plus your external drive's **Home** folder) as a folder inside it. Files show as online-only until you open them, then download on demand, exactly like the other cloud drives. It's a first-class Finder Location, not a mounted network volume, and it's **on by default** — nothing to switch on. - **Which form is it in?** The **Mounting** tab says so. "On — in Finder under Locations" is the normal one. If the Location can't start on your Mac, Storage Studio falls back to a network drive so your files stay reachable — that one is **not** in Finder's sidebar (putting a drive there needs an administrator password, which Storage Studio doesn't ask for), so the tab shows you its folder path and an **Open the Drive** button. - **Read and write.** Open, edit, rename, move and delete files in your cloud folders right in Finder — changes sync to the account. Transfers are multi-threaded and resumable, and unchanged files are skipped. - **Home is read-only.** Your **Home** folder holds your relocated apps and Storage Studio's own settings, so it's read-only in Finder — you can browse it, but can't delete or change those files by accident. - **Encrypted.** The link between Finder and Storage Studio is encrypted and stays on your Mac; cloud and Bridge transfers stay encrypted end-to-end. - **Not running means not running.** Quit Storage Studio and the Location disappears and all background activity stops; it returns when you reopen the app. - **What's in the drive** — a per-account on/off list, so you choose which accounts show up. If the new mechanism can't start on your Mac, Storage Studio automatically falls back to the previous network-drive style, so your files are always reachable. Any account that's briefly unreachable is skipped so one offline account never blocks the others. ## Using accounts in transfers Any account you add automatically appears in: - **New Transfer** — as a source and as a destination dropdown. - **Data Parking** — when you type a path into either pane, paths of the form `account-nickname:folder/path` resolve to that account. - **Scheduled jobs** — pick the account in the New Transfer sheet, set a schedule, and the job runs on cadence whether or not the app is in the foreground. Cross-provider transfers work out of the box. You can copy `work-drive:Reports/` → `client-s3:backups/2026/`, or your Documents folder → `production-sftp:incoming/`, in any direction. Transfers that touch a remote endpoint automatically resume and retry, so a brief network blip won't lose progress on a multi-GB upload. --- # Bridge — connect a device Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/devices # Bridge — connect a device The **Devices** tab in the Cloud Accounts window connects another device to your Mac and does two things: it shares that device's folders so they appear right alongside your cloud accounts, and it **shares your clipboard both ways** — what you copy on one device turns up in the other's Junk Yard. It's powered by **Storage Studio Bridge**, a free companion app you install on the other device. Bridge for **Windows** is available now; **Android** and **Linux** are coming later. Unlike a cloud account, a Bridge connection is **direct and end-to-end encrypted** — there's no server and no cloud in the middle, so your files never pass through anyone's servers. It works whether the two devices are on the **same Wi-Fi** or far apart **across the internet**. ## How Bridge keeps your data private Bridge is a private, direct connection between just your two devices — think of it as a personal VPN that exists only between them. Everything that crosses it is **end-to-end encrypted**: it's scrambled on the device that sends it and only unscrambled on the device that receives it. Nobody in between can read it — not us, not your internet provider, no one — and nothing is ever stored on a server or kept in the cloud. Each device is identified by its own **security key**, and the **six-digit Tunnel Code** shown on both screens lets you check that you're linked to the right device with no one in the middle. The link works whether the devices are on the same network or far apart across the internet, and either way the data stays encrypted the whole way. When two devices that are apart are first finding each other, that brief step may use public internet infrastructure, but your actual files and clipboard are always encrypted and never readable by anyone else. If you'd rather Bridge never touched the internet at all, turn on **Local network only** (off by default). With it on, Bridge stays entirely on your local network, so the two devices must be on the same Wi-Fi or local network to find and reach each other. ## How to connect 1. Install **Storage Studio Bridge** on the other device and open it. It shows a short **connecting code** (three groups, like `XXXX-XXXX-XXXX`). 2. On your Mac, open **Cloud Accounts → Devices**. 3. Type the connecting code into the box and click **Pair**. 4. A **Tunnel Code** (six digits) then appears on *both* the Mac and the device. Check they match — that's your assurance the link is the right one and nobody is in the middle. ## Turning Bridge on or off Bridge is **on by default**. If you'd rather not pair anything, one switch turns the whole feature off (and back on again). You can pair more than one device with your Mac — up to a set limit (**five** by default) — and each one keeps its own settings. ## Where shared folders appear Whichever folders you choose to share from the other device show up inside the **Storage Studio** drive in Finder, in a folder named after that device. Turn on the **Cloud Drive** (the Cloud Drive tab) to browse them. A device that's offline is simply skipped until it's reachable again — everything else still mounts. ## Staying connected Under the connecting box, **Keep connected for** sets how long to stay connected — from 15 minutes up to a week, or **Always**. After that time the device disconnects on its own. Each paired device has its own row with **Connect**, **Disconnect**, and **Forget** buttons, and you can **pause and resume** sharing at any time. Forgetting a device removes it; you'd need the connecting code again to re-pair. ## Pausing keeps the link warm Pausing — from either the Mac or the device — stops everything you copy or share from going out, but it does **not** disconnect. The connection stays alive in the background, so each side still sees the other and resuming is instant. While paused, both sides clearly show **Paused** rather than a misleading "Connected", and tell you which side did the pausing. ## Heartbeat — proof the link is healthy While connected, a tiny keep-alive beats roughly every **20 seconds** — even while paused. Both the Mac and the device show **last handshake … ago** as live proof the link is up and well. ## App versions and updates Each side shows the other's **app version**. Bridge can check for its own updates — automatically when it opens, and any time from a **Check for updates** button in its Help. Storage Studio also lets a connected Bridge know when a newer version has been released, shown as an **Update available** banner with a button to go get it. Nothing ever installs by itself — it just points you to the download. ## The Bridge Activity monitor There's a dedicated **Activity** view — a window on the Mac, and the **Activity** tab in the Bridge app — that shows the whole picture for **All devices** at once or for a **single device** you pick. At the top you get the live receiving and sending speed and the lifetime totals, and below that three charts: - **Throughput** — speed over time - **Total transferred** — the running cumulative amount - **Items transferred** — scraps versus files Hover over any chart to read the exact values, **zoom and pan** to look closer, switch the **time range**, or jump to a **past date** — Bridge keeps about a month of history. Underneath, a **searchable activity log** names every item sent and received, along with connections and pauses. ## Clipboard sharing (optional) Each device has a **Share my clipboard with …** switch. Turn it on and whatever you copy on one paired device appears in the other's **Junk Yard** — text, images, and files and folders. Received items wait in the Junk Yard as scraps; they're **not** dropped straight onto your system clipboard, so nothing you've copied gets quietly replaced — you click a scrap to copy it when you actually want it. It's off until you turn it on, and you can set it differently for each device. Passwords are never shared. **Passwords are never shared** — anything copied from a password manager (or marked secret) is skipped on purpose. ## Two master switches in the Junk Yard header Above the per-device switches are two global controls, right in the **Junk Yard** header: - **Capturing** — saves what you copy on this device into your own Junk Yard. Off ⇒ nothing you copy is recorded as a scrap. - **Sharing** — sends what you copy to your connected devices. Off ⇒ nothing leaves this device, no matter what each device's "Share my clipboard" switch says. They're independent — capture locally without sharing, share without capturing, both, or neither. Sharing only happens while a device you share with is actually connected. **Copies showing up on your other Mac with sharing off?** If both Macs use the same iCloud account, that's **macOS Universal Clipboard** (Handoff) — an Apple feature, separate from Storage Studio. Turn it off in **System Settings → General → AirDrop & Handoff** on both Macs. --- # Tuhi & Free Up Space Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/free-up-space # Tuhi & Free Up Space ## Tuhi — one tap, hands-off The fastest way to reclaim room is **Run Tuhi** on the [Home screen](/manual/home). One tap and Storage Studio: - Clears caches and rarely-used files that are safe to remove. - Reclaims old local backups that are pinning deleted blocks. - Keeps your cloud files online-only so they don't take up local space. It runs **on its own, with live progress**, and stops when it's done. Tuhi is built to be safe and reversible — it only touches things it knows are safe, and nothing it does is destructive to your own files. If you'd rather see and approve every step, open the **Free Up Space** wizard below — same engine, but preview-first and fully under your control. ## The Free Up Space wizard Free Up Space is a three-step recovery flow. Every step previews what will happen before a single byte moves. ## Step 1 — Cache cleanup Scans the well-known cache locations on macOS: - Xcode DerivedData and ModuleCache - Homebrew `Cellar/Caches` - npm, pip, cargo, yarn caches - Browser disk caches (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge) - Docker layer cache and Podman build cache You see a checklist with size estimates. Uncheck anything you'd rather keep, then confirm. The deletion is staged so a crash mid-step doesn't half-delete a directory. ## Step 2 — Oversize-file relocation Finds files above your configured **size floor** (default 1 GB) in common workspaces. For each one you can: - Move to your fast drive (preserves filename and relative path) - Relocate (move + shortcut) - Skip Step 2 obeys your pair boundaries. It never touches files outside an active pair. ## Step 3 — Cloud eviction (optional) If you have iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive installed, Step 3 can move their cached local copies back to "online only" so the local space comes back. The files always stay in the cloud — this is never a delete — and you opt in per-provider. For **iCloud Drive** the eviction happens in one step. For **Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive**, macOS 14 and later no longer lets apps free those files directly, so Storage Studio reveals them in Finder and points you to the provider's own **Remove Download** — the same online-only result, done the way macOS requires. ## Cancel any time Each step's confirm button is the only thing that actually causes filesystem writes. You can cancel before that button without any side effects. ## Recovery guidance After a Free Up Space run that can't significantly reduce internal usage, Storage Studio surfaces a **Want more space?** panel with context-specific chips: - **Open Apps window** — when your applications are taking up a lot of room. - **Open Data Parking** — when your Documents folder is large, to relocate big subfolders to your fast drive. - **Open iCloud settings** — for the iCloud-synced subset of Documents (macOS 14 and later no longer lets apps free these up automatically, so the setting has to be flipped by hand). - **Manage snapshots** — when there are at least five macOS local snapshots pinning deleted space. Opens the [Local Snapshots manager](/manual/local-snapshots) where you can see which snapshots are already on Time Machine and reclaim the space with one click. ## Why deleting files doesn't always give the space back This is the most confusing thing about storage on a Mac, and it isn't anything you've done wrong. macOS quietly keeps recent local snapshots of your drive so it always has a clean point in time to back up from. Delete a file a snapshot still refers to and the file goes away — but the space it used stays taken, held for the snapshot rather than for you. So you can delete gigabytes, watch free space not move at all, delete more, and still see nothing. The space is genuinely spoken for, just not by anything you can see. It comes back on its own as the snapshots age out, usually within a day, or you can release it now in the [Local Snapshots manager](/manual/local-snapshots). Storage Studio keeps the three cases apart and tells you which one you're looking at: space **in use** by files that are really there, space **held for now** by snapshots of files you already deleted, and space your Mac has just **released** on its own. Held space is never treated as an emergency, because it isn't one — it's the explanation for why deleting more didn't help. ## Emergency space Open it from the **More menu ••• → Emergency Space**, from the small red alert badge beside the notification bell on the Home screen, from the button on a low-space notification, or from the banner that appears on the Home screen when your built-in drive is nearly full — several ways in, because a screen you can't find at the moment you need it is no use at all. It's never behind a licence prompt. The small red badge beside the bell appears only once your built-in drive is at least **95% full**, measured as a share of the drive's size rather than a fixed number of gigabytes — 25 GB free is comfortable on a 2 TB Mac and nearly fatal on a 256 GB one. A warning that's permanently on screen is furniture, not a warning. It's an analysis with actions attached, rather than one big button that acts first and explains afterwards. - **You say how much room you need.** Storage Studio picks the smallest, safest set of actions that reaches it and stops. - **Safest first, not biggest first** — space that comes back without deleting anything, then things moved to your fast drive and still fully available, then files an app rebuilds by itself, and only then anything deliberate. - **Disposable things come before your own files.** Clearing rebuildable data — caches, and temporary files an app abandoned — is offered ahead of anything that relocates work of yours, because the two don't cost you the same. On a full disk the only suggestions used to be to move your own folders. - **It never offers to move the folder your browser keeps you signed in with.** That folder is large and mostly cache, which makes it look appealing — but moving it wholesale takes your cookies, sign-ins, history and open sessions with it. Storage Studio recognises those folders by the kind of thing inside them rather than by which browser made them, so it covers browsers that don't exist yet. - **A folder that's already been relocated is never relocated again.** What's left behind after a move is a set of links; moving those a second time would copy the links over the real files. The check is deliberately one-sided — any real content still present and the move proceeds as normal. - **Nothing destructive is ever ticked for you.** Reversible options may arrive selected; anything that removes data never does, however tight things look — and removals still go to the Recycle Vault, so they stay recoverable. - **Options that would reclaim nothing aren't listed**, and Storage Studio never empties your Trash for you: that one is permanent, so it stays your decision. It tells you how much is in there and lets you open it. - **It measures afterwards** and says so if the result fell short of the prediction, instead of claiming success either way. ## Temporary files — the part nobody can see Your Mac sets aside two areas that are, by its own definition, disposable: a **temporary area**, cleared when you restart, and a **cache area**, which your Mac empties by itself when the disk gets tight. Apps write to both knowing the contents can go at any moment. Storage Studio used to measure neither. An app that left large amounts behind in either place was therefore invisible: the disk filled up, and the answer came back as space that couldn't be accounted for. Both are now measured, and what's there is attributed to the app that put it there. - **Grouped, so it's a decision rather than a dare.** An app can leave hundreds or thousands of similarly-named folders behind. They're gathered into one row per app: how much it holds altogether, how many folders that is, how old the oldest is, and whether more were made today. - **Named from what's really on your Mac.** The name comes off the folders themselves, and Storage Studio then asks your Mac whether an app of that name is installed. If nothing answers to it, it shows the name as found rather than inventing an owner. - **Being in a disposable area only gets a folder considered.** Those areas also hold things apps are using this second, so every folder is checked on its own first: nothing may have it open, nothing may be talking to it, nothing in it may have been touched recently, and a recoverable copy has to be possible. A check that can't be completed counts as a no, and the folder is left alone. - **A banner names the cause.** When one app accounts for a large share of what's there, the screen says so at the top. One limit worth knowing: clearing is offered only when a recoverable copy can be kept, and that copy lives on your fast drive. With the drive unplugged these rows are explained but not offered — a "clear" that only moved things elsewhere on the same full disk wouldn't free anything. ## Stopping a clear-up, and seeing what it removed - **Stop is always available while it runs**, and it's safe by design. It finishes the folder already in progress and then halts, so nothing is left half-removed. That means it isn't instantaneous — there's a short gap, and the screen says what it's doing during it rather than leaving you wondering whether the button worked. - **It tells you where it got to** — how much was cleared and how much is left, both counted rather than estimated. - **Carry on picks up from there**, not from the beginning. Folders already removed aren't done again. - **You can see exactly what it removes**, before, during and after. Each option opens to the full list of folders it will remove; while it runs, the folder being removed is named; afterwards you get the list of what was removed and, on a stopped run, a separate list of what wasn't touched. - **Everything removed stays recoverable** in the [Recycle Vault](/manual/recycle-vault), and a whole clear-up counts as **one** entry — so putting it back is one action, however many folders it removed. - **Where those recoverable copies sit decides whether you gain anything.** The Recycle Vault keeps removed files **on your external fast drive**, not on your Mac — which is exactly why a clear-up frees space: the folders leave your built-in drive and the recoverable copy lands somewhere else. Your Mac keeps only a small list of what's recoverable, so the window can still tell you what's there when the drive is unplugged. That's also why clearing is offered only while the drive is connected. - **An interrupted clear-up is sorted out at the next launch.** If your Mac shuts down mid-removal, anything whose copy completed is added to the Recycle Vault so you can find it, and anything whose copy didn't finish is undone. Nothing is ever reported as removed while it's still on your disk. ## Review before anything moves Choosing **Free up space** doesn't start anything. It opens a review step first, headed *"Nothing has happened yet."* Everything you ticked is opened up one level, with the real measured size of what's inside, so you can see what you're agreeing to before a file is touched. You're also told what you'd gain in the terms that matter — roughly how much this frees, and what your free space would be afterwards compared with now. ### What moving actually does The review step spells this out, because it's the thing people most often assume wrongly: - **Your original folder keeps working.** Storage Studio leaves a link where it was, so anything that opens those files still finds them in the same place. The folder itself isn't replaced by a single shortcut — the folder stays and the files inside it become links — which is why Finder, Spotlight, your apps and anything that walks through your folders carry on as normal. - **Every move is recorded**, and appears in What's Using Space with a one-click **Move back**. - **It's reversible for as long as the drive is connected.** This is the honest version: the files themselves now live on your fast drive. They're reachable while it's plugged in, and they aren't while it isn't. Nothing is duplicated and nothing is in two places — the space came back precisely because the data went somewhere else. ## While it runs — and what actually happened The review sheet doesn't vanish when you confirm. It becomes the progress view, and then the report. - **The figures are measured, not predicted.** It reports space genuinely returned on your disk, not the amount it hoped for. Copying finishes before space comes back, so the number catches up as each item completes — and it says so, so a lagging figure doesn't read as a failure. - **The time remaining is honest.** You get how far along an item is and roughly how long is left, phrased the way a person would say it: "a few seconds", "12 minutes", "1h 20m". When it genuinely can't estimate yet it says **working out how long that will take**, rather than inventing a number it would have to walk back. - **You can close it.** Moving files is a background job and carries on without the window. Reopening Emergency Space gives you a **Show progress** button to return to it. - **A part-finished move can be repaired.** If a move gets most of the way but leaves some files behind, that row offers **Put the link back** — one click to finish the rest. Nothing was lost in the meantime, and if a repair genuinely isn't possible it tells you so instead of retrying pointlessly. ## When an app is holding a folder open A folder can't be moved safely while an app is actively writing to it. So instead of failing with a puzzling error, Storage Studio offers **Move when closed** and shows you exactly what's in the way — *"Safari is still using this folder"*, or *"3 apps are still using this folder"*. - **Ask it to quit** sends the app the same polite request as choosing Quit from its menu, so it can save and close normally — and Storage Studio then confirms it really exited rather than assuming it did. - **Check again** re-checks after you've dealt with an app yourself. If an app is sitting on an unsaved-changes dialog, the sheet tells you that rather than wrestling with it. - An app Storage Studio isn't allowed to quit is named plainly, with a request that you quit it yourself. - **Force quit** is deliberately awkward to reach: it appears only after a polite quit has been refused, and sits behind its own confirmation explaining the risk — some apps write to their data continuously, and ending one mid-write can damage it. Your files stay exactly where they are until you choose something. Afterwards, Storage Studio offers to reopen the apps it closed on your behalf. --- # What's Using Space Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/whats-using-space # What's Using Space Open it from the **More menu ••• → What's Using Space**, or the **What's Using Space** tile on the Home screen. (Some screens call the same window the Storage Inspector — the menus use the plainer name.) Everything here is **measured on your Mac**, not estimated. That's meant literally: where a figure can't be established, Storage Studio says so rather than filling the gap with a guess. **Measure again** walks your disk afresh, and results appear as they arrive instead of making you wait for the whole pass to finish. ## What changed The top section, and usually the one you came for. It compares this measurement against the previous one, over the exact window between the two readings: - **Gone** — room taken by files that weren't there last time. Deleting these gives the space back. - **Pinned** — space held by your Mac's own recent backup snapshots of files you've *already* deleted. Deleting more won't return it. - **Reclaimed** — space released since the last reading, with nothing for you to do. The first time you open it there's no earlier reading to compare against, and it says exactly that rather than showing zeroes. ## Biggest on this disk Your largest folders, biggest first — and you can **drill into any of them to any depth** to find what's actually responsible, rather than stopping at a top-level folder that only tells you which room the mess is in. Folders appear as each one finishes being measured, so the list fills in rather than blocking. Any row can be revealed in Finder, and **Collapse all** resets the view. A folder macOS won't let any app read is called out as unreadable, never silently counted as empty. ## Space held by backups How much room your Mac's local snapshots are holding — and how old it is. The heading gives you the headline immediately: how much is held, and how old the oldest snapshot is. Each snapshot is listed with its age and when it was created, a plain description of why it exists (a restore point made before a system update, or a routine automatic one), and what can be done about it: **required by macOS**, **your Mac can clear this by itself**, or **not marked clearable**. One honest caveat: macOS reports a single combined figure for all local snapshots and no size for any individual one. Storage Studio shows the combined total and says so, rather than dividing it up into numbers it would be making up. A button alongside opens the [Local Snapshots manager](/manual/local-snapshots) if you want to review or release them now. ## Known quick wins Collapsed by default: the well-known caches and leftovers, with a count of how many are already empty — so a long list of nothing doesn't crowd out the real findings. ## How much was covered The footer never overstates its reach. If parts of your disk are off limits to any app, or measuring stopped early to stay out of your way, it says so and tells you what the figures do and don't include. Emptying the Trash isn't offered here either. It's the one action that can't be undone, so it stays your decision. ## Relocated **Relocated** in the header opens the list of everything currently moved to your fast drive, each with a one-click **Move back**. This is where a move is undone — and it's worth being clear about what a move is: your folder keeps working because a link is left in its place, but the files themselves now live on the fast drive, so they're reachable while it's connected and not while it isn't. --- # Auto Rules Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/auto-rules # Auto Rules Storage Studio builds its cleanup rules to fit **your** Mac. Rather than a fixed list, it looks at the apps and caches you actually have and keeps the safe, regenerable ones tidy automatically — so a newly-installed app is covered without you editing anything. Open it from the **Auto rules** tile on the [Home screen](/manual/home). **Move rules keep what you still use.** A "Move by age" rule uses the age you set, but it also asks macOS's own index which files you've **opened recently** — and keeps those where they are, even if they're old. So a reference you still open, or a movie you rewatch, isn't relocated just because you haven't *edited* it. Moved files leave a shortcut, so anything that does move still opens in place while your drive is connected. ## What you'll see - **Applied automatically** — the safest, fully regenerable caches (the ones your apps rebuild on their own). These run on the normal schedule, no action needed. - **Suggested — needs your approval** — anything less obvious is *proposed*, never applied on its own. Each suggestion shows what it is, why it's safe, whether it's a **Move** or a **Delete**, and roughly how much it would free. **Approve** the ones you want; **Dismiss** the rest. - **Dismissed — reclaim anytime** — dismissed items aren't lost; **Restore** any of them back into your suggestions whenever you change your mind. A note in the notification bell tells you when there are suggestions to review. The **Rule Optimizer** tile on the Home screen shows when your Mac was last reviewed — click it to re-scan now. Storage Studio also keeps optimising quietly in the background, only while your Mac is idle (pause or resume it anytime). ## Always under your control - Turn on **"Suggest only — never apply automatically"** to approve everything yourself. - Your own hand-written rules are kept separate and are **never** changed by the automatic ones. Manage them in **Settings → Rules** (there's an *Open Rule Editor* link in the window). - Nothing personal is deleted. Only regenerable caches are applied automatically; personal files are only ever archived (moved), and only after you approve. Everything runs through the same safety limits as the rest of Storage Studio — nothing you've changed recently is ever touched automatically, the "never delete personal files" setting is always respected, and every move is reversible. --- # Duplicates — remove exact copies Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/duplicates # Duplicates — remove exact copies Over time the same download, photo, video or export ends up saved in more than one place. The **Duplicates** window finds files that are **exact copies of each other** — matched by their actual content, not just the same name — so you can reclaim the space by keeping one copy and moving the rest to the Trash. Everything is reversible. Open it from the **More menu ••• → Duplicates**, or just ask Tuhi to "find duplicate files." ## One source at a time A left sidebar lists each place separately, so the analysis is specific to that source: - **This Mac** — your Downloads, Documents, Desktop, Movies and Pictures. - **iCloud Drive** — the files already downloaded to your Mac. Online-only files are skipped, so nothing is ever downloaded just to compare it. - **Your cloud accounts** — one row per connected account (Google Drive, S3, Dropbox, OneDrive, and more), each labelled with its real provider. Duplicates can be cleaned up everywhere — on this Mac, in iCloud Drive, and in your cloud accounts. Storage Studio finds what's duplicated in a cloud account by reading the provider's own file fingerprints, so nothing is ever downloaded to compare it. Removing a cloud duplicate is held to the same standard as a local one. The copy you're keeping is re-checked in the account itself immediately before anything is removed, so a scan result that has gone stale can never lead to the last copy being deleted. Where your provider has its own Trash, the confirmation tells you the removal is recoverable there; where it doesn't, the removal is treated as permanent and you're asked to confirm that deliberately. ## Checking a copy before you remove it Two files with the same name and the same size are exactly when you want to look before you delete. So each copy is clickable: - **Click the file's name to open it.** On this Mac it opens in its usual app. In a cloud account it opens on the provider's own website. - **Click the folder underneath to go there** — in Finder for local files, or on the provider's website for cloud ones. What's possible depends on the service. **Google Drive** and **Box** open exactly the copy you clicked, which matters because Drive lets two files share a name in the same folder — so we never guess. **Dropbox** opens the file and folder by their path. **OneDrive**, and storage like **S3, FTP and SFTP**, don't give us an address we can open, so those names aren't clickable — hovering tells you why, and you can copy the full path instead. ## Scanning Each source has an **Auto-scan** switch (on by default) and a **Scan now** button. **Scan now** and **Stop** apply only to the source you're looking at, and every cloud account has its own scan, progress and results — starting one never holds up another. Scanning **this Mac** runs only when your Mac is idle, on power and cool, because reading your whole disk competes with your own work. Checking a **cloud account** is far lighter — it reads a list of file fingerprints over the network, and downloads nothing — so it only waits for a short pause in your typing, and works on battery too. Either way it stays out of the way: one account at a time, at most once every few hours each. When it's waiting rather than working, the status line says why, so a quiet background scan never looks broken. Results appear **as they're found** rather than all at the end, so a large account starts showing duplicates within about a minute while it keeps working. Everything is remembered between launches, so the window opens instantly. ## Very large accounts If an account holds an enormous number of files, Storage Studio covers as much as it sensibly can in one pass and says so — *"very large account, partial view — scan again to cover more of it"* — instead of implying the first look was complete. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides aren't ordinary files and carry no content fingerprint, so they're skipped rather than guessed at. ## Choosing what to keep Duplicate sets are listed largest space-saving first. For each set, Storage Studio marks a **recommended** copy to keep — the one you're most likely using, based on where it lives and when you last opened or created it — and explains why. Pick the copy to keep, and the rest of the set moves to the Trash. **Clean all — keep the best of each** does the whole list in one confirmed step. Files that only *look* identical because they share storage on disk (copy-on-write clones and links) are shown separately and left alone — removing them wouldn't free any space. ## Hands-off with Smart Care Prefer not to visit the window? Turn on **Preferences → Rules → Global overrides → "Let Smart Care clean duplicate files"** (on by default). After Smart Care's normal safe run, it will *offer* to remove the exact-copy files the background scan found, keeping the safest copy of each. You always approve before anything moves to the Trash, and it's always reversible. --- # Recycle Vault — restore removed files Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/recycle-vault # Recycle Vault — restore removed files The Recycle Vault is Storage Studio's own **recoverable trash**. Everything the app removes for you — clearing a duplicate, freeing up space, uninstalling an app — goes here *instead of being deleted*, so you can always bring it back. It's separate from your Mac's Trash, and separate from Restore Points (which undoes **moves**, not **deletes**). Open it from the **More menu ••• → Recycle Vault**, or ask Tuhi — she can also tell you what's in it. ## Which disk is it on? The short answer: **your external fast drive holds the files, your Mac holds only the list** — plus anything still waiting for the drive to be reconnected. The list is tiny, so the window can always tell you what's recoverable and which items need the drive plugged in to bring back. Keeping the files off your built-in drive is the whole point — if removed files stayed on your Mac, removing them wouldn't have freed anything. The window tells you this itself. Every path in the list is where an item *came from*, which is the one place the vault isn't — so the vault's own size, shown at the top, can open it in Finder, and the vault's settings carry a **Where it's kept** section giving the same plain answer. ## Where removed files rest When your external SSD is connected, removed files rest **on the drive**, versioned and recoverable for about **6 months**, then they clear automatically — so the space genuinely leaves your Mac. If no drive is connected, Storage Studio holds them **safely on your Mac** in the meantime (with a warning), and moves them onto the drive automatically the moment you reconnect it. A size limit keeps that on-Mac holding area from ever filling your internal disk — if it's reached with no drive connected, new removals are **paused** until you connect one, so nothing is ever lost. The full safety net needs an external SSD, so without one you'll see a critical reminder. ## Restoring The window lists everything recoverable, newest first, with each item's name, where it came from, size, when and how it was removed, its version, and how long before it's cleared. Select one or many items and: - **Restore** — back to where they came from (never overwriting an existing file). - **Restore to…** — into a folder you choose. - **Undo last removal** — everything from the most recent removal, in one step. - **Delete now** — permanently (with a confirmation). A large selection is erased one item at a time, with a count of how far it has got and the list emptying as it goes, so the window keeps responding while it works. Settings let you change the on-Mac holding-area limit, how many versions of each file to keep, and how much of your drive the vault may use. --- # Local Snapshots manager Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/local-snapshots # Local Snapshots manager macOS keeps **local snapshots** of your drive so Time Machine has a steady point-in-time view to back up. Each snapshot quietly holds on to space that files used at the moment it was taken, until the snapshot ages out (usually within 24 hours) or is cleared. **Why this matters for Storage Studio:** when you move a large folder to your fast drive, the space it freed can stay *reserved* rather than actually free — your Mac still reports the drive as just as full. The Local Snapshots window gives you a simple way to see those snapshots and reclaim the space, so you never need to open the Terminal. ## How to open it Two paths: 1. **More menu → Local Snapshots…** — always available. 2. **Want more space? → Manage snapshots** in the Free Up Space recovery panel — surfaces automatically when you have five or more local snapshots. ## What the window shows ### Header External-drive icon, title, and a one-line Time Machine summary: > Time Machine destination: *your backup drive's name* > > Latest backup: *the date and time of the most recent backup* A **Refresh** button re-checks your snapshots and your Time Machine destination. ### Past-relocations reclaim banner Appears when you have one or more active relocations whose freed blocks haven't been reclaimed yet: > **[amount] freed by past moves may still be reserved** > > Folders now sit on your fast drive, but the space they freed > hasn't shown up yet — local snapshots from before the move are > still holding it. Reclaim now to clear enough snapshots to > surface the freed space. > > [ **Reclaim [amount]** ] The button clears just enough snapshots to release that much space. After a successful reclaim the banner hides itself until a new move completes. ### Snapshot list One row per local snapshot, sorted newest first. Each row shows: - A **status icon**: - ✓ green seal — **Already backed up to Time Machine**, safe to delete - ⚠ orange triangle — **Local only**, not yet on Time Machine; deleting would lose state - 🔒 gray lock — **macOS system update snapshot**, required, cannot be deleted - ? gray question mark — **Backup status unknown**; treat as local-only - Relative age ("10 minutes ago", "6 hours ago") - The date and time the snapshot was taken - A status description line - A red **Delete** button for non-required entries; system-update snapshots show a gray **Required** pill instead. Clicking Delete shows a confirmation with wording tailored to that snapshot's backup status, then removes it and refreshes the list. ### Footer - **Delete all backed-up** — bulk delete every snapshot classified as *already backed up to Time Machine*. Local-only and system-required snapshots are skipped even if you click this. - **Custom reclaim: N GB → Reclaim now** — for arbitrary amounts unrelated to past relocations. Useful when a specific operation needs space, e.g. "I need 20 GB free before installing a macOS update". - **Outcome banner** — status of the last action, dismissible. ## Automatic clean-up after a move After every successful move to your fast drive, Storage Studio clears just enough snapshots so the freed space shows up right away, instead of waiting for the snapshot to age out. If that ever doesn't work it's noted quietly and never affects the move itself. After three or four big moves you'll typically not need the Local Snapshots window at all — your Mac catches up on its own. The window remains the right tool for older moves whose space is still reserved, and for one-off reclaims (for example, ahead of a macOS update that wants a specific amount of free space). ## Safety guarantees - **Snapshots your Mac needs are never offered for deletion.** System-update snapshots always show a gray Required pill instead of a Delete button, and can't be removed. - **Bulk delete only touches snapshots already backed up to Time Machine.** Local-only snapshots are always skipped, so you can never lose state that hasn't been backed up yet. - **Everything happens in the background.** The window stays responsive even while several snapshots are being deleted, and no single step can freeze it. ## Can I move snapshots to my fast drive? No — local snapshots have to live on the same drive as the data they refer to, so they can't be moved to your fast drive. What you can do: 1. **Point Time Machine at your fast drive** so backups land there, then delete the local snapshots once they're safely backed up (the green seal icon tells you when). 2. **Let the automatic clean-up and reclaim banners do their job** to keep the reserved space to a minimum at all times. --- # Restore Points Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/restore-points # Restore Points A restore point safeguards Storage Studio's **own records and settings** — the registry of everything it has moved (so it never forgets where your files came from and can always put them back) plus its configuration and rules. **Your files are never copied into a restore point.** Storage Studio takes one automatically before each batch of moves, and you can also make one yourself any time with **Create Restore Point**. You'll find it all in the menu under **More → Restore Points**. ## Roll back in one click The headline button is **Roll Back Last Batch**. One click returns the most recent batch of moved files to where they came from, using the same safe move-back Storage Studio uses everywhere. It **never overwrites your data** — if it can't return something without writing over whatever is now at the original spot, it skips that item and tells you, and leaves everything else exactly as it was. ## A clear, readable list Relocated folders show up as meaningful, top-level items. The thousands of small per-file cache moves that happen automatically in the background are kept out of the way, so the list stays easy to read. ## Almost no space A restore point stores **records, not copies**, so it takes up next to nothing — even when there are lots of them. The "Space used" figure you see reflects the small footprint of those records, never the size of your data. ## Looks after itself Restore points are fully managed for you: - Storage Studio keeps a sensible recent history and **automatically prunes the oldest** entries so the list never grows out of hand. - If an entry is ever left incomplete — say your Mac shut down mid-move — it **repairs itself** the next time around. - Saving a restore point never slows down or blocks a move; it happens in the background. ## Where they live Restore points are kept on your **external drive**, so they're available whenever it's connected. Plug the drive in and your full history is right there. ## Restoring your settings Restoring puts Storage Studio's records and configuration back safely: it's done in one atomic step, confined to Storage Studio's own area, and your current state is backed up first. It **never touches your files, your apps, or their settings** — only Storage Studio's own memory. --- # Apps window Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/apps # Apps window The Apps window is one place to see every application on your Mac and on your fast drive, launch any of them, and free up space by moving, offloading, or uninstalling the ones you choose. You never need the Terminal. You never run commands. Storage Studio takes care of everything. ## Open the Apps window From the menu bar popover, click the **Apps** button (or pick **Apps…** from the More menu). ## All Apps — your app launcher The window opens on **All Apps**: a clean grid of every app, with a small badge showing whether each one lives on your Mac or on your fast drive. It works like a launcher: - **Search** — the search box is ready as soon as the window opens. Start typing and the grid filters instantly. - **Open with Return** — the best match is highlighted; press Return to open it. A floating "Opening…" card appears while the app comes up. - **Keyboard navigation** — press Tab to jump from the search box into the grid, use the arrow keys to pick an app, and Return to open it. - **Esc** closes the window. - **Click** any icon to open that app. ### Keep it in the Dock Flip the **Show in Dock** switch (top of the window) to keep a Storage Studio icon in the Dock. Clicking it reopens this All Apps grid — a fast, Spotlight-style way to launch anything. You can also set a global keyboard shortcut in **Settings → Advanced → Keyboard Shortcut** (default ⌃Space) to summon it from anywhere. ## Tabs Four tabs across the top, each with a count: - **All Apps** — every app, for browsing and launching. - **Internal** — apps still on your built-in drive that you could move. - **Moved** — apps already moved to your fast drive. Move them back here. - **Offloaded** — apps archived to your fast drive. Restore them here. ## What the badges mean Each row in the Internal tab has a small coloured safety badge: - **Safe (green)** — straightforward to move. No surprises expected. - **Watch (yellow)** — moves fine, but the app's vendor sometimes reinstalls itself when it updates. Storage Studio watches for that and quietly re-moves the app for you. - **Review (orange)** — the app does something uncommon (a background helper, an unusual permission). Storage Studio will show a one-time confirmation before moving it. - **Hold (gray)** — Storage Studio recommends you leave this one alone. These are usually Apple system apps, anti-virus tools, drivers, or apps installed by a system installer that need administrator access. They're left exactly where they are. ## Three things you can do with an app Every app in the Internal tab has its own buttons: **Open**, **Move**, **Offload**, and **Uninstall**. ### Move (keeps it working) Moves the app to your fast drive but leaves a shortcut behind, so it still launches from the Dock, Spotlight, Launchpad and Finder exactly as before. A typical app finishes in seconds. The app keeps working normally — it just runs from the fast drive. ### Offload (frees the most space, reinstallable) Offload tucks the app **and its data** safely onto your fast drive and removes it from your built-in drive — like "uninstall, but you can put it back". An offloaded app can't run until you restore it, so it frees the most space of any option. Nothing is deleted: open the **Offloaded** tab and click **Restore** to copy it back exactly as it was. If you later decide you don't want it, **Remove** deletes the archive (to the Trash). Offload copies everything to the fast drive and checks it before removing the originals, so the app is never left half-moved. If a copy that's already on your Mac is in the way when you restore, Storage Studio tells you instead of overwriting it. ### Uninstall (removes it and cleans up) Uninstall removes the app and the leftover files it scatters around your Mac (preferences, caches, support files, and so on). A confirmation screen lists exactly what will be removed and how much space it frees. Everything goes to the **Trash**, so you can put it back if you change your mind. The app is quit first if it's open. Apps installed by a system installer ask for your password or Touch ID before they can be removed. ## Move or offload several apps You can act on apps one after another — each operation runs on its own and you can keep using your Mac while they work. A progress card keeps you posted, and if anything can't be completed it tells you why rather than failing quietly. ## Move an app back Open the **Moved** tab. Each row has a **Move back** button. Storage Studio restores the app to the exact folder it came from and the fast- drive copy is removed. You can also **Offload** or **Uninstall** a moved app from here. ## The vendor-reinstall watch Some apps (Slack, Chrome, VS Code, lots of Electron apps) replace themselves silently when they update. Without help, that would undo your move and you'd end up with two copies — one taking up internal-drive space again, one stranded on your fast drive. Storage Studio watches for this. When it notices that a moved app has been replaced at its original location, it waits until you quit the app, cleans up the old copy on your fast drive, and re-moves the fresh version for you. You don't have to do anything. You can see this watch in the **Settings → Services** panel as **Relocated apps watch**. It will show *Standing by*, *Watching N apps*, *Waiting for N apps to quit*, or *N apps need your review* depending on what's happening. ## When a moved app asks for your password to update Apps that update themselves — many browsers, Electron-based editors and chat apps, and anything with a built-in updater — keep working after a Move. But while your fast drive is **disconnected**, a moved app can't reach its own bundle. If that app is open and tries to install an update or a helper tool, macOS may show a prompt asking for your password or Touch ID to *"add a new helper tool."* That prompt comes from **the app's own updater, not from Storage Studio**, and it can't finish while the drive is unplugged. It's safe to click **Cancel**. Then either reconnect your fast drive — the app and its updater work normally again — or move the app back to internal storage from the **Moved** tab. A code editor is a common example, but the same is true of any self-updating app. Apps that update very often (browsers, Electron apps) are usually happier left on internal storage, so reserve relocation for large apps you update infrequently. ## Survives crashes and force-quits Every move is checkpointed step-by-step. If Storage Studio quits mid-move, your Mac loses power, or you force-quit the app, the next launch picks the move up from where it left off. If something can't be safely resumed, the original app is restored to its original location automatically. You will not lose an app. ## Good to know - **Move** relocates only the app itself; its saved data stays where it is. **Offload** moves the app *and* its data to the fast drive (and restores both). **Uninstall** removes the app and its data to the Trash. - A moved or offloaded app needs your fast drive connected. If it's unplugged, a moved app won't open until you reconnect the drive, and you'll restore an offloaded app once it's back. - Storage Studio doesn't migrate apps between Macs. - Nothing is ever deleted outright — uninstalled and removed items go to the Trash, so you can recover them until you empty it. --- # Junk Yard Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/junk-board # Junk Yard Junk Yard is a scratchpad for the bits and pieces you copy all day. It's a board of cards that quietly catches everything you copy and gives you a tidy place to keep quick notes, snippets, images and files for a little while — then clears them out so nothing piles up. Think of it as a place for *throwaway* scraps, not a filing cabinet. Most things clear themselves on a timer unless you pin them, and everything stays on your Mac. ## Turn it on Junk Yard lives behind a toggle. If you don't see it yet, switch it on in **Settings → Junk Yard → Enable Junk Yard on this Mac**. Once it's on, a **Junk Yard** tab appears in the top row, right after Apps. ## Open the Junk Yard There are three ways in: - Click the **Junk Yard** tab at the top. - Press the global shortcut (default ⌃⇧J) from anywhere — it opens in its own window. - Flick your pointer to the very top edge of the screen to slide out the **curtain** (see below). ## Catching what you copy With **Watch the clipboard** turned on, every time you copy something (⌘C) it lands on the board as a new card: - **Text and rich notes** keep their formatting. - **Images** show a thumbnail. - **Files and folders** are kept as a reference — you'll see the icon and the full name — and copying that card back gives you the actual file, ready to paste into Finder or an email. - **Several files at once** land as a single card — up to four show right on it (click one to open, or copy it); more than that becomes a tidy summary you can open to see the whole list, copy them all, or open / copy / show-in-Finder any single file. Very large batches (above the limit you set in settings — 25 by default, up to 250) are skipped so the board stays quick. - **Web links** are recognised — the card shows the link, clicking it opens it in your browser, and links are grouped under the **Links** filter. - **Passwords are never caught.** When you copy from a password manager (or anything that marks what you copied as a secret), Storage Studio skips it on purpose. A small dot in the menu bar **blinks green** for a moment each time a new scrap is caught, so you know it landed. ## Auto-clear Every card has a lifetime. By default scraps tidy themselves away after a while, and each card shows a live countdown like `Clears in 3h`. You choose how long under **Auto-clear after** — grouped by Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks and Months, anywhere from 5 minutes up to 6 months. This is what keeps the board from turning into clutter. ## Pin to the top Pinning a scrap keeps it at the **top** of the board so it's easy to find again. A pinned scrap still clears on its normal timer — pinning is about *order*, not keeping something forever; if you want a scrap to last longer, give it a longer auto-clear time. **Unpin** drops it back into the normal order. ## How many it keeps The board keeps up to a set number of scraps (you can set this from 50 to 500; it starts at 250). When it's full, the **oldest** scrap drops off to make room. ## Find what you want A search box filters the board as you type — by the words in a scrap, a file's name, even the text *inside* an image. One-tap **filters** narrow by kind — All, Pinned, Clipboard, Notes, Media, Files, Links, Text and Rich — and a **time** menu narrows by when a scrap was added (Today, Yesterday, a few days ago, or Earlier). **Smart find — powered by Apple Intelligence.** On a Mac with Apple Intelligence, search understands *meaning*, not just exact words, and you can ask in plain language — "images from yesterday", "that link I copied" — and it sets the right filters for you. It runs entirely on your Mac, works offline, and exposes nothing private. Without Apple Intelligence the search still works on-device, matching words and the text it reads inside images. ## Colour-code your scraps Give any card a colour to group related things at a glance — work, personal, a project, whatever you like. Click the small **colour dot** on a card and pick one of seven colours (or none to clear it); the card takes on a soft matching tint. Once a few scraps are coloured, a row of **colour chips** appears under the filters — tap a colour to show just those scraps, tap again (or **Clear**) to show every colour. Colour works alongside the kind and time filters. ## Files that move If you later relocate a file that's on the board — say, by moving it to your fast drive with Storage Studio — the card follows it to the new location and shows a small **Moved** note, so opening or copying it still works. If the original is gone for good, the card marks it **Missing**. ## Working with a card Each card shows the kind of scrap, an **Added** time stamp, and a row of buttons: a lifetime/pin menu, a **colour dot** (to label it), **Copy** (with a little "Copied!" flourish), **Edit** and **Delete**. Hover a card and it gently zooms. Click a text or image thumbnail to open it big in a **preview** — a movable, resizable window you can page through with the ‹ › buttons or the arrow keys. From the preview you can set its **lifetime/pin** and **colour**, Edit, Copy, Delete, and (for a file) **Open** it. A coloured scrap tints the preview to match. Rich notes show in full, including any images in them. ## Make something new The header has **New note**, **Add image** and **Embed file** buttons: - **New note** opens a rich-text editor — bold, italic, underline, monospace for code, bullet and numbered lists, insert a link, and insert an image (⌘B / ⌘I / ⌘U work as you'd expect). Images you drop in can be selected and resized with **Small / Medium / Large / Fit** or by dragging a handle, and they're saved with the note so they stay put. - **Add image** opens an image editor: rotate, flip, adjust brightness / contrast / colour, and crop by dragging the corner handles. Saving adds a new image card. - **Embed file** drops a file reference onto the board. The editors are floating panels you can move and resize. One thing worth knowing: **editing a card always saves a new scrap** and leaves the original untouched — so you never lose what you started from — and the edited result is copied to your clipboard, ready to paste. The copy keeps the original's **colour, pin, and auto-clear timer**, and **⇧⌘V** pastes without formatting. ## The curtain Slide your pointer to the very top edge of the screen and a slim translucent strip glides into view with your scraps in a row. - **Click** a tile to copy that scrap (then paste with ⌘V). - **Two-finger tap** (secondary click) a tile to delete it — pinned scraps are protected and never delete this way. You can turn this off in **Settings → Junk Yard**. - **Scroll just by moving:** glide the pointer toward an end and the row scrolls that way (faster the closer to the edge); two-finger scroll works too. - Click a tile's **eye** to open the big **preview** — the curtain stays open and follows along, highlighting and scrolling to whichever scrap you page to with the preview's ‹ › arrows. A **trash** button shows on hover. The compact grid on one side holds the **filter icons**, a **＋** to start a new note, and a blue button to **open the full board**. Each filter icon **cycles** as you click it: once to **show only** that kind (blue), again to **hide** that kind (red, with a strike), and a third time to turn it off — include or exclude several kinds at once, and the **All** icon clears every filter. Pinned scraps wear a pin badge, and a chevron appears at an end when there are more tiles that way. Prefer it on the side? Set **Dock to: Top** or **Right** in **Settings → Junk Yard**. By default the curtain waits a brief moment before sliding in — so reaching up for the menu bar doesn't pop it — and closes a moment after your pointer leaves. Want it quicker or more deliberate? Adjust the **Open delay** and **Close delay** in **Settings → Advanced → Junk Yard Edge Curtain** — the same place has a **Panel background** slider to make the curtain more see-through or more solid, and **Scroll speed** sliders for each of the curtain's three scrolls (edge auto-scroll, pointer movement, and trackpad/scroll-wheel), from slow up to **5× fast**. It pops open while you drag so you can judge any of them live. ## Copying back Clicking any scrap — on the board or in the curtain — copies it to the clipboard, so the very next ⌘V pastes it wherever you are. ## Shortcuts Four global shortcuts work from anywhere, configurable in **Settings → Junk Yard** (and in **Settings → Shortcuts**); there's also a **Hot Keys** chip on the Home screen: - **Open the Junk Yard** — default ⌃⇧J - **Save clipboard to Junk** — default ⌥⇧C - **New note** — default ⌥⇧N - **Toggle dock position (Top ↔ Right)** — default ⌃⇧D All of Storage Studio's global shortcuts (including the Apps grid shortcut, default ⌃Space) are kept distinct from one another, so they never collide. ## Good to know - Everything on the Junk Yard stays **on your Mac**. There's no network, no account, and nothing syncs anywhere — it's private by design. - It's built for throwaway scraps. If you need something permanently, save it somewhere proper; the board is meant to clear itself. - Don't want auto-capture? Turn off **Watch the clipboard** and add scraps yourself with New note / Add image / Embed file (or the Save-clipboard shortcut). --- # Storage Charts Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/charts # Storage Charts Charts shows you what your two drives have been doing over time. Storage Studio snapshots free/used bytes per day and keeps the history on your Mac. **Nothing is uploaded.** ## Time ranges Seventeen pre-defined ranges from **24h** through **All time**, selectable by chips at the top of the window. The last range you chose persists. ## Dual axis Internal SSD and external fast drive share one chart. Each gets its own colour and its own Y-scale so a 500 GB internal and a 4 TB external both read clearly without one dwarfing the other. ## Drag-to-zoom and hover Drag horizontally on the chart to zoom into a date range. Scroll inside the zoomed view to pan. Hover any point to see the exact byte count for that day. ## Where did it go? Under the chart is the answer to the question a chart alone can't settle — and the **More menu ••• → Where did my space go?** goes straight to it. Choose a period — or drag across the drop you're curious about — and Storage Studio breaks down that exact window: what grew, what was freed, what Storage Studio itself did, and how much it couldn't account for. Two rules it never breaks. Nothing is scaled to make the figures add up neatly; whatever can't be explained is shown as its own line. And a partial answer is never presented as a complete one — if the period reaches back before something started being measured, it says so at the top. ### Space held by automatic backups, named This used to be one of the biggest things the breakdown couldn't explain — which was odd, because Storage Studio could see it perfectly well on another screen. It's now a line of its own, shown whenever your Mac is holding anything, with a **Release that space** action beside it. That's the option that actually helps when deleting files hasn't. ### Two different numbers, said out loud There are two ways to count free space on a Mac: the one Finder shows, which counts space held in automatic backups as though it were free, and the amount your Mac would really hand out right now. The chart draws the first; the breakdown works from the second, because that's the one that decides whether you can save a file. Where they differ, the panel says so and gives you both rather than quietly picking one. ### Why free space can go *down* after a clean-up that worked When something is moved or removed, your Mac makes a backup reference to what was there — so the space you just freed can be held again almost immediately, in proportion to how much moved. It looks exactly like a failure and isn't. Storage Studio says so at the moment it happens, and only when it has actually measured that your Mac is holding a meaningful amount. ### Releasing held space is a request, not a command Your Mac decides what it can let go of. **Release that space** asks, measures what actually came back, and tells you which of three things happened: the space is yours again, some of it is on its way, or your Mac kept hold of it for now — in which case it usually returns on its own within about a day. Nothing you still have is deleted either way, and the third outcome is never dressed up as success. Over long periods — weeks rather than a day — Storage Studio may not be able to separate held space from the rest, because the older readings it kept didn't record it. It says so for those periods instead of guessing, and it improves on its own as newer readings replace the old ones. ## A watch on your free space Storage Studio checks how much room is left on your built-in drive every half minute. The check costs almost nothing — nothing is scanned, and nothing is read from your disk — so it can safely run all the time; only when the number actually moves does anything else happen. It warns on the **rate**, not the size. A large drop isn't news on a drive with plenty of room left, and a smaller one is urgent when there isn't much, so Storage Studio weighs how fast space is going against how much you have and tells you roughly how many days of room you have left at this rate. You hear about real trouble early, and you don't hear about ordinary downloads, updates and builds. Notices name the app when it can be identified, hedge when a folder only looks like it belongs to one, and say plainly when they couldn't tell — a name is never invented to fill the gap. It's one notice per situation, never one per file, and you can mark a source as expected so it stops being mentioned. If the space moved because one of Storage Studio's own jobs was running, the notice says that instead of alarming you. ## Export Right-click the chart and choose **Export PNG…** to drop a high-DPI image somewhere — handy for support tickets. **Export CSV** saves the full history as a spreadsheet-ready file. ## Retention About a year of history is kept, and older entries are trimmed automatically. If you want to keep an archive, export to CSV periodically. --- # Preferences Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/preferences # Preferences The Preferences window opens with a permanent **left sidebar** listing six sections — *Services*, *Quiet Hours*, *Rules*, *Notifications*, *License*, *Advanced*. Every section is one click away in plain sight; there are no overflow menus or hidden tabs. ## Services The first section in the sidebar, on purpose — this is where to look when something in Storage Studio feels off. The page lists every background component as a row with a **traffic-light dot**: - **🟢 Green** — Running normally. Either actively working or idle and ready. No action needed. - **🟡 Yellow** — Sleeping or waiting. Paused, awaiting a connection, or temporarily unable to act but expected to recover automatically (e.g. external drive disconnected; transfers queued behind a missing drive; license check-in awaiting next cadence). - **🔴 Red** — Stopped or needs attention. The detail line explains what to do. Rows are grouped into three sections so the page scans coherently: **Storage engines** — Background service · External drive · Free Up Space engine · Data Transfers · Data Parking. **Licensing + connections** — Your plan · License check-in · Software updates · Cloud accounts. **System health** — App permissions · Daily storage snapshots · Anonymous activity reporting · Self-healing monitor. The page refreshes continuously while it's open. ## Quiet Hours Three modes — *Scheduled*, *Smart* (recommended), *Always-on* — controlling when Storage Studio is allowed to run heavy operations like cache cleanup and scheduled relocations. The Smart mode pauses automatically when you're active on your Mac, on low battery, or in a meeting (detected via camera/mic-in-use flag — your A/V is never recorded). ## Rules Edit your active rules and global overrides (e.g. *"Never delete personal files — only move them"*, age floors). Changes apply automatically; the background service picks them up within 30 seconds. ## Notifications A single toggle for *Notify after every successful auto-action run*. Off by default. ## License Your plan, subscription, and activation. See [Activate your license](/manual/activate) and [License management](/manual/license-management) for the full walkthrough. ## Advanced - **Reveal config file in Finder / Open in default editor** for hand-edits to your settings file. - **Startup** — *Launch Storage Studio at login* toggle (uses the same macOS service-management entry as System Settings → General → Login Items). - **Permissions** — Full Disk Access detection with a 4-step walkthrough when not granted. - **Self-backup** — Snapshot your settings and recent pairings to the external fast drive so a Mac reinstall doesn't lose them. - **About** — version and app details, all selectable for copy-paste into bug reports. ## Self-healing (built in) Storage Studio audits its own background components at every launch and continuously while the app is running — often while you're actively using it, less often when it's hidden, suspended entirely during sleep, with an immediate re-check on wake. It silently repairs anything that's gone wrong in the background, restarts a background component if it has stopped, restores missing settings, and gets a stuck job moving again. By design, successful repairs are **not** surfaced in the popover — there's nothing for you to do, and "we fixed N things at launch" would contradict the *All systems normal* header above it. If you want detail, **Preferences → Services → Self-healing monitor** shows the latest audit time and outcome. The audit runs entirely on your Mac — nothing about its operation is sent anywhere. --- # Learning Center Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/learning-center # Learning Center The **book icon** at the top of the window — just before **More** — opens the **Learning Center**: a tidy panel of tips, short guides, and "what's new" that helps you get more out of Storage Studio. It slides out from the book icon and groups everything by topic, with feature **Highlights** at the top so the most useful things are the first you see. ## What's inside The Learning Center can show a mix of content — plain tips, pictures, short videos (both tall and wide), a downloadable PDF, a swipeable set of images, or a link that opens in your browser. Some cards have a **button** that takes you straight to the right place — the Apps grid, Data Transfers, a chart, Smart Care, and so on — or opens a related guide right here in the panel. ## It's never empty Even on a brand-new install with no internet, the Learning Center already has a highlight for each major feature — Data Parking, Apps, Free Up Space, automatic tidy-ups, Job Insights, Tuhi, the Finder Location, Bridge, Collab Sync, local snapshots, cloud transfers, Storage Inspector, one-tap activation, and the safe-and-reversible promise — so you can always explore what the app can do. ## When there's something new When new content arrives that you haven't seen, the book icon turns **yellow with a small dot**. Open the Learning Center and it goes back to normal — nothing to dismiss, no badge that nags. New tips and guides arrive on their own in the background (more often during the workday, quietly overnight), so you don't need to check for them. --- # Notifications Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/notifications # Notifications Storage Studio keeps you informed in two complementary places: **inside the app** (the notification bell) and in **macOS's own Notification Centre**. Anything worth telling you about shows up in both. ## Inside the app — the notification bell The bell at the top of the window is Storage Studio's own notification center. It gathers the things you'll want to glance at: - **Background activity** — a job that needs your attention. - **Plan and trial reminders** — free trial ending, a paid plan renewing soon, or a founder free period winding down. - **Cleanup suggestions**, drive connect / disconnect notices, and the like. - **Occasional messages from the Storage Studio team** — a short, timely note, sometimes with a button that takes you to the right screen or opens a guide in the Learning Center. If you dismiss one, it stays dismissed — it won't come back to nag you. ## Also in macOS Notification Centre Every one of those in-app notifications **also** appears in macOS's own Notification Centre, branded as "Storage Studio," so you see it even when the app's window isn't open: - **Informational** items arrive quietly, with no banner. - **Warnings** show a banner. - **Important** ones can come through even while you're in a Focus. Each notification is shown **once** and disappears the moment it's no longer relevant in the app, so your Notification Centre mirrors the bell rather than piling up. Examples: an external drive disconnected or reconnected, your internal disk running low (and an automatic relocation kicking in), an eject succeeding or a file still in use, and a scheduled tidy-up finishing. On first launch, macOS asks once whether to allow notifications. Approve to see banners; the app remembers your answer and never asks again. --- # Your free trial — extend it, or use a code Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/trial # Your free trial — extend it, or use a code Every copy of Storage Studio starts with a **free trial** — no card required. When it's running low, you have a few ways forward that don't mean paying right away. ## How your free trial starts Your trial begins on first launch, once you register. On the very first screen you enter a few basic details — your **full name**, **email address** and **country** — and then verify the email by typing back a **one-time code** we send to it. The moment the address is confirmed, your free trial is running. There's no card and nothing to pay; the details are used only to set up and support your trial, send that code, and email a couple of friendly reminders. Your files never leave your Mac — only these basic details are sent. You'll need an internet connection so the code can reach you, and if this Mac has already used a trial there's nothing to fill in. This first-launch verification is separate from the trial *extension* below, which is an optional way to add more days later on. ## Extend your trial by verifying an email You can add more free days by confirming an email address. On the trial screen, enter your email and we send a **one-time code** to it; type the code back in and your trial is extended on the spot. How many extra days you get is set by us and shown before you confirm. A couple of ground rules keep it fair: - You can extend **once per Mac and once per email address**. - **Disposable / throwaway email** addresses (10-minute-mail and the like) aren't accepted — use a real inbox you can receive the code at. This is separate from a promotional [free offer](/manual/offer), which (when a campaign is running) hands you a full activation code through a short contact form. ## Have a coupon or an onboarding code? At checkout on the [pricing page](/#pricing) there's a **"Have a coupon or onboarding code?"** box. The two kinds of code do different things: - A **coupon** discounts the plan you pick from the cards above — you still complete payment in Stripe, just at the reduced price. Some coupons are locked to a single plan. - An **onboarding code** is redeemed with **nothing to pay**. Enter it, fill in a couple of details, and we email you a licence to activate in the app. The box checks your code as you type and tells you which kind it is and what it applies to before you continue. ## When your trial ends The trial-ended screen isn't a dead end. Alongside buying a plan, you can, right from that screen: - **Extend your trial** by verifying an email, as above (when you're still eligible). - **Apply a coupon** — type it in and it carries the discount onto whichever plan you then choose. - **Activate a licence or onboarding code** you already have — paste it in to unlock the app immediately. Once you have a licence code in hand, see [Activate your license](/manual/activate) for exactly where it goes. --- # Activate your license Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/activate # Activate your license Storage Studio uses Stripe for all payments. You don't enter card details into the app itself, and you don't enter any payment reference either. Instead, the server emails you a **License Code** right after you pay. ## How the License Code keeps things simple When your checkout succeeds, our server generates a 16-character code, links it to your licence, and emails it to you. All you ever need to activate is that code and your email — nothing sensitive about your payment ever ends up on your clipboard, in a screenshot, or in a support ticket. ## Where to find your License Code Check the email Storage Studio sent right after checkout: > **Subject:** Your Storage Studio activation code The body contains a 16-character code in a copy-friendly box. Triple- click to select the whole thing. If you can't find the email, check spam / promotions tabs, then contact [support@storagestudio.us](mailto:support@storagestudio.us) — we can re-send it. ## Where to paste it Storage Studio → **Preferences → License**, or the paywall after your trial ends. Enter: 1. Your purchaser email address (the one Stripe billed) 2. The 16-character License Code The app checks the code with our server, unlocks your licence, and remembers it on this Mac. From then on Storage Studio works offline for up to 14 days at a time. ## Activate in one tap — straight from your email You don't have to copy the code at all. Every licence and offer email now has an **"Activate Storage Studio"** button. Click it and the app activates itself: - If Storage Studio is **already open**, it comes to the front and activates on the spot. - If it's **closed**, the button opens it and it activates as it launches. - If it **isn't installed yet**, the button's web page offers the download first — install Storage Studio, then click the button again. A short "Activating…" spinner is followed by a **"You're all set"** confirmation. It's safe: the link is **single-use, expires after a short while, and Storage Studio checks it with our server** before activating, so nothing happens unless the link is genuine and still valid. If a link has already been used or has expired, the app says so plainly and offers to enter the code by hand instead. The 16-character code stays in every email that has one, so you can always type it in yourself — handy if you're activating on a different Mac from the one reading your email. ### The "You're all set" screen The confirmation summarises exactly what you got, built from your licence, so the rows match your plan — your **plan** (or the **offer** name for a free offer), how long a free period lasts and when it **ends**, the price you'll continue at afterwards (for a founder offer), your next **renewal** date (for a subscription), and the **account** email your licence is registered to. ## Reminders before anything changes Storage Studio reminds you inside the app, in the notification bell, before any change to your plan — so nothing is ever a surprise: - **Free trial ending** — about a week before it runs out, with a clear next step. - **Plan renews soon** — a calm heads-up naming the date your card will be charged automatically. Nothing to do; you can review or cancel any time. - **Founder free period ending** — for Inner Circle members, a nudge to continue at your founder price before your free days end. These are informational only. Storage Studio never locks you out mid-period, and your settings and moved files are untouched either way. ## One license, one Mac The first time you redeem a License Code on a Mac, the server hard- binds the code to that machine. Trying to activate the same code on a different Mac fails with **"This code is already activated on a different Mac."** If you need to move it — new laptop, hardware swap, reinstall after a clean macOS install — reply to your activation email or contact [support@storagestudio.us](mailto:support@storagestudio.us). We release the lock from the admin panel; the next activation from any Mac re-binds the code to whichever fingerprint redeems it next. ## Managing your subscription Open the Stripe Customer Portal from **Preferences → License → Manage in Stripe**. Stripe owns billing, receipts, invoices, and cancellation. We don't keep a copy of your card. ## Refund policy Once activated, payments are **non-refundable** except where mandatory consumer-protection law requires. Please use the 7-day free trial before purchasing. Full details in our [Terms of Service §5.5](/legal/terms#5-5-no-refunds-important). --- # Claim a free offer Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/offer # Claim a free offer When Storage Studio is running a campaign, trial users who haven't previously activated a paid license see a **Claim a free offer** button on the License pane. The campaign details (duration, type) come from the current campaign, so what's on offer can change over time — what your code grants is locked in at the moment you claim. ## Who can claim The offer button is visible when **all** of the following are true: - A campaign is currently running. - You're on an active free trial (not expired, not converted). - You've **never previously activated** any Storage Studio license on this Mac. The "has ever activated" flag is sticky across the "Remove License" action, so removing a license doesn't reset eligibility. If you're not eligible, the button simply doesn't appear. ## Two kinds of offer A campaign grants one of: - **Free trial extension** — adds days or months to your existing trial expiry. - **Free subscription window** — gives you a free month, three months, or however long the campaign offers. At the end of the window the app drops to the trial-expired state unless you subscribe. ## The claim flow 1. Click **Claim a free offer** on the License pane. A new window opens with a contact form. 2. Fill in: **email**, **full name**, **profession**, optional contact number, optional business name, **country**, **state / region** (where applicable), and an optional "why" note. 3. Click **Send verification code**. We email you a 16-character verification code to confirm you own the address. 4. Paste the code into the form, click **Verify & issue code**. 5. We email your **License Code** within seconds. Paste it into **Preferences → License → Enter activation code** as you would for a paid purchase. ## Anti-abuse rules You can claim **one offer per email and one per Mac**, ever — this applies even across campaigns. Disposable email providers (mailinator, guerrillamail, 10-minute-mail, etc.) are rejected at the verification step. If you genuinely need to move a claimed offer to a different Mac, contact [support@storagestudio.us](mailto:support@storagestudio.us) and we'll release the lock from the admin panel. ## What happens if the campaign ends Once issued, your code stays valid for the duration set when it was issued (typically 90 days to redeem). The campaign itself ending doesn't retroactively change codes already in the wild — the offer terms are snapshotted onto the code at the moment you claim. ## Inner Circle (founder) members If you asked to join the **Inner Circle** and were approved, your approval email has a one-tap button that takes you straight in to download Storage Studio — no code to copy. The founder offer is a **free trial period plus a founder discount** (for example the yearly plan at half price), and during the free period there's **no licence key to enter or manage**: activating from the email link handles it, and the "You're all set" screen shows your free-until date and the founder price you'll continue at. About a week before your free period ends (the timing is set by us), you'll get an email with a **one-click payment link** that opens checkout with your founder discount already applied — so you continue at your founder price in a single tap. Everything you've moved keeps working exactly as it is, and your founder price is locked in for good. --- # Manage your subscription Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/manage-subscription # Manage your subscription Storage Studio doesn't store your payment details — Stripe does. All subscription management happens in the **Stripe Customer Portal**. ## Open the portal Two ways: - From the app: **Preferences → License → Manage in Stripe**. - From any Stripe receipt email: the **Manage subscription** link. The portal is operated by Stripe and authenticates via a one-time email link. We don't see your portal session. ## What you can do in the portal - **Cancel.** Stops future charges. Access continues until the end of the current paid period. - **Update payment method.** Switch cards, update billing address. - **Download invoices.** Every charge has a downloadable PDF invoice/receipt with full VAT/GST breakdown. - **Switch plan.** Cancel the current plan and start a different one. We don't pro-rate refunds for the cancelled period. ## What we do automatically When Stripe tells us your subscription ended, was cancelled, or had a failed payment, your Mac picks that up on its next check-in. The app may show a status banner asking you to renew, but it won't lock you out mid-period. ## What happens after cancellation Your locally stored files are not touched. Storage Studio is a manager, not a vault — cancelling stops the automatic tidy-ups but leaves your file layout exactly as it is. You can re-activate later by purchasing again. ## Remove the licence from this Mac The **Subscription** card has a destructive **Remove from this Mac** button. Click it, confirm in the alert, and the local activation record is dropped — this Mac stops reading as licensed and falls back to trial or the purchase screen depending on your trial state. Use it when: - You're selling or repurposing this Mac and want no licence trail left behind. - You're moving the activation to a different Mac — remove here, then re-activate with your email and License Code on the other machine. - You're troubleshooting a stuck activation and need a clean slate. Your **Stripe subscription is untouched** by this button. Billing continues on its normal cadence; only the local record on this Mac is removed. To stop billing as well, use **Manage in Stripe** *before* removing the licence here so you don't lose easy access to the portal. Re-activation works exactly like the original: enter the same email and License Code and the server reissues the licence to this Mac. --- # Collab Sync — mirror a folder on two Macs Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/collab-sync # Collab Sync — keep a folder mirrored on two Macs If you have **two Macs both running Storage Studio** and they're already paired, **Collab Sync** keeps a folder of your choosing mirrored on both — your project folder at home and at the office, or a shared folder between two collaborators — with **no cloud in between**. Unlike connecting a device (which lets you *browse* the other Mac's folders live), Collab Sync keeps a real **local copy on each Mac** and quietly keeps the two in step. ## Setting it up Open **Collab Sync** from the menu. Pick a folder on this Mac and a direction — **this Mac → other**, **other → this Mac**, or **both ways**. Your request then goes to the other Mac, where its owner sees **"‹your Mac› wants to sync a folder with you,"** **chooses where to keep it,** and taps **Grant** (or Decline) — so a folder is never created on the other Mac without its owner's say-so. Until it accepts, your side shows **"Waiting for it to accept."** Storage Studio **shows exactly what will mirror**: total size, file count, and skipped hidden/cache items. A whole-disk or Home folder can't be chosen; a very large folder asks once more. ## How it stays fresh - Save a file in a synced folder and it reaches the other Mac within seconds. - When both Macs changed the same file, **both versions are kept** — the newer one is current and the other is preserved. You get a notification and can **Review** and **Restore** the other version in a click. - If the other Mac has a file open, you'll see a **"🔒 In use by…"** hint — a heads-up only; you can still edit. - While the other Mac is away, **nothing piles up**. The moment it's reachable again — on the same Wi-Fi *or* across the internet — the two folders do **one catch-up pass** and they're back in step. - Hidden and cache files (`.DS_Store`, caches, temp files) **never sync**. ## Deleting is off by default A file you delete on one Mac simply reappears from the other, so an accidental delete can't wipe the other Mac. For a one-way mirror you can opt in to having deletes carry across — and even then the file is moved to the **Trash** (recoverable), never erased, with a large batch held back for you to review. ## Status and control Each synced folder shows a plain-English status — **In sync**, **Syncing…**, **Waiting**, **Paused**, or **Needs attention** — and you can **pause**, **resume**, or **remove** it any time. Removing a sync just stops the mirroring; the files already on each Mac are left in place. Everything rides the same **direct, end-to-end-encrypted** link as a device connection — your files never touch a server. --- # Troubleshooting Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/troubleshooting # Troubleshooting The most common issues, ordered by frequency. ## "Full Disk Access is required" macOS hides important folders unless the app has Full Disk Access. Open **System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access**, add Storage Studio if missing, and switch it on. Storage Studio picks the change up within a couple of seconds — no relaunch needed. If it's already switched on and you're still being told it's missing, your Mac has most likely stopped honouring it. That happens because the permission is tied to the exact copy of the app it was granted to, so updating or repairing Storage Studio can quietly drop it. Switching Storage Studio **off and then on again** in that same list restores it. ## Storage Studio says it's already running Only one copy of Storage Studio runs at a time — two would mean two sets of background jobs working on the same files. If a second copy is started, it hands over to the one already running and brings its window forward instead of starting again. Use the menu-bar icon to reach it. ## Something is still running after I quit It shouldn't be. Quit and Restart both run the same shutdown, which also ends the helpers Storage Studio starts for transfers, backups and device connections — each is asked to finish tidily first, and anything still going after that is ended. Two things are left alone on purpose: the helper that brings the app back after a restart, and the one installing an update — stopping that second one would leave you with a half-replaced app. The **background service** is separate and keeps running by design; that's what does the routine tidying while Storage Studio is closed. Stop it yourself from **Settings → Services** if you want everything quiet. ## My external drive doesn't show in the picker - Make sure it's mounted in Finder. - The drive must be formatted as APFS, HFS+, or ExFAT. NTFS-only drives are read-only on macOS and can't be the destination side. - Open the Inspect window to confirm Storage Studio sees the drive at the system level. ## License didn't activate - Double-check the email address matches your Stripe receipt exactly. Aliases like `+plus` don't match. - Confirm you copied the full 16-character License Code, with no trailing space or quotes. - If you bought less than 60 seconds ago, your purchase may not have finished processing yet. Try again in 30 seconds. - The activation server is at `storagestudio.us` — make sure your firewall isn't blocking it. ## The My Drive code didn't arrive, or doesn't work Check your junk folder — the code usually arrives within a minute. Each code lasts 15 minutes and only works on the Mac that asked for it. If it expired, use **Send a new code**; if it says too many codes or too many wrong attempts, wait an hour. The code always goes to the email Storage Studio is registered to — check that inbox. If it says the address already has My Drive on a licence, activate that licence on this Mac instead. ## Paste doesn't work in a text box Copy, paste and select-all work in every text box, including the code fields. If one doesn't, update to the latest version. Boxes that ask you to type a word before something destructive refuse a paste on purpose. ## Offline grace period expired Storage Studio works offline for up to 14 days after one successful validation. Beyond that you'll see a "couldn't validate license" banner. Reconnect to the internet and click **Validate now** in the License pane. ## Still stuck? Email `support@storagestudio.us` with: 1. The version of Storage Studio (Preferences → About) 2. Your macOS version 3. What you tried 4. Any error message exactly as shown We reply within one business day. --- # Uninstall Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/uninstall # Uninstall Storage Studio is removable in three steps. There is no "secret" file the uninstaller leaves behind. ## Use the in-app uninstall wizard (recommended) **Storage Studio → Uninstall…** opens a three-step wizard: 1. **Restore relocated apps.** Any application you moved is put back in your Applications folder, and the shortcuts left behind are removed. 2. **Restore relocated files.** Optionally walks every recorded move/relocate and reverses it. Files return to their original internal location. 3. **Remove app + data.** Removes the Storage Studio app along with the private data folder it keeps in your home folder. You can stop at step 1 or 2 if you want to keep your tier layout. ## Manual uninstall If the wizard isn't available, you can remove everything by hand: 1. Quit Storage Studio, then drag **Storage Studio** from your Applications folder to the Trash. 2. In Finder, choose **Go → Go to Folder…**, enter `~` (your home folder), and move Storage Studio's private data folder to the Trash. It's a hidden folder; press ⌘⇧. to show hidden items. 3. (Optional) On your external drive, Storage Studio keeps a small hidden state folder inside its working folder — move that to the Trash too if you want a completely clean removal. Manual uninstall does **not** restore relocated files or apps. Those keep their shortcuts. Use the in-app wizard if you want them back. ## What stays behind - Files you moved out to your fast drive stay where they are. Storage Studio is a manager; uninstalling it doesn't migrate files back unless you ask it to in step 2. - macOS keeps permissions records — you may want to remove the Storage Studio entry from System Settings → Privacy & Security. --- # Release notes Source: https://storagestudio.us/manual/release-notes # Release notes The canonical changelog also ships inside every release of the macOS app (Storage Studio → Help → Release notes). The history below is generated from the actual published releases, newest first — so it always matches what's live, including the download and its checksum. ---