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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 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.

  • Automatic backups are spaced out: at most once every 30 minutes

while your Mac is plugged in and once every 2 hours on battery (longer while your Mac is busy). Every change made in between goes into the next version.

  • Battery and sleep. Plugged in, a backup keeps your Mac awake until

it's done. On battery, automatic backups let your Mac sleep as usual and carry on next time. Back up now — the big button on every backup card — runs straight away at full speed and keeps your Mac awake until it's finished, as long as the battery is above 30%.

  • Put off for long? If an automatic set hasn't saved a version for

more than a day (a week for one that only backs up when you ask), its card shows how long it's been and why, with a large Back up now button, and you get one notification. Both clear after the next backup.

  • 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 of them is your active drive at a time, 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.

The Delta Drive window. The Delta Drive card on Home opens your drive in a window of its own, with the same screens as the tab. Its header says Viewing: <drive> ▾ — the drive you're looking at — and is where you change drives.

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 a one-time 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….)

  1. Confirm your email with the one-time code we send — always to the email your Storage Studio

licence or trial is registered to. Paste it on the same Mac within 15 minutes (copy it rather than retyping it — it is case-sensitive). No code? Check your junk folder, then Send a new code.

  1. Connect your storage — Amazon S3, 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.

  1. 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.

Your active drive. Your active drive is the one your account is using right now — Delta Drive, or a My Drive on storage you own. Your Mac and the website both open on it, and on your Mac it's the only drive the app browses; other drives open on the website.

Switch drives. Open Viewing: <drive> ▾ at the top of the Delta Drive window. Under Your drives, View <drive> in your browser opens another drive on the website and changes nothing on your Mac. Under Change the active drive, Make <drive> my active drive… switches to it — and always asks first: Make <drive> your active drive? explains that your Mac's Finder folder, your synced and linked folders and the folders you keep copied to the drive will all use the new drive, and that your other Macs and the website follow too. Nothing is copied or deleted; the drive you leave keeps everything it has, and you can switch back at any time. Press Make it active.

While it switches, the window says Switching to <drive>… and shows each step — pausing work on the old drive, connecting, updating Finder, loading your files. If any step fails, the whole switch is undone and it says The drive wasn't switched, leaving you exactly where you were. If Finder is slow, it says Finder is still catching up, with Retry and Not now.

Delta Drive → Storage lists every drive under Your drives — Delta Drive (if your plan includes it) and each storage account you've connected, up to three — with the one in use marked and Switch to this (or Reconnect) beside the others. Wherever you switch on your Mac — the header menu, the gear menu, the Delta Trust card or Storage — it asks the same question first. Switching copies no files and loses nothing: each drive keeps its own files, folders, search and settings, and your backups don't change.

Your drive's folder in Finder is named after it. Inside the Storage Studio location in Finder, the folder is called Delta Drive when Delta Drive is active, and My Drive (<name of your storage>) when your own storage is. Finder follows a switch — and because the folder's name changes, a Finder sidebar favourite or an alias made to the old name stops working after a switch (one made to the new name stops if you switch back). Make it again from the new folder. Nothing inside the drive moves, and synced and linked folders are unaffected.

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.

When your Delta storage is full. Depending on your plan, going over your storage size is either charged per GB for what you use, or uploads pause at your plan's size — the pricing page says which for each plan. When uploads pause, Storage Studio tells you once: new backups, uploads, syncing from your Mac to the drive and locking a folder wait, and anything already waiting stays in line. Downloads, restores, deleting files and unlocking a locked folder keep working, so you can always get your files back and make room. Free up space or choose See plans for a bigger plan — everything carries on by itself as soon as there's room.

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. Your recovery kit is the only way back in. If you lose it, your backups can never be recovered — not even by Storage Studio.

Lost the copy you saved, or it didn't open? On the Mac the vault was set up on, while your licence is active, the key button on the Delta Trust card (Recovery kit — save or print it again) shows the same 24 words again and lets you save a fresh PDF or print it. Press E-mail me a code first: a one-time code goes to the e-mail on your licence, and the kit is shown only after you enter it. It works only on that Mac — the only place the key exists.

Delta Trust works on one Mac at a time. Your vault is connected to the one Mac that backs up to it. Your plan and billing belong to your email and never move — only the connection does.

  • Disconnect this Mac. In the Delta Trust card's menu, **Disconnect

this Mac… explains what happens, asks you to tick I understand** and confirms with Touch ID or your password. This Mac stops backing up and sets its vault key aside. Nothing is deleted.

  • Moving to a new Mac. Disconnect the old Mac, then on the new Mac

choose I have a recovery kit, enter the code we email to your licence address, and type your 24 words.

  • Still connected elsewhere? If the vault is connected to another

Mac, no code is sent: the screen says Delta Trust is set up on that Mac and asks you to disconnect it there first.

  • Lost that Mac, or it no longer works? Request disconnect on

the same screen asks us to do it (after an emailed code, to be sure it's you). We email you when it's done; then restore with your kit. If the old Mac comes back online, it stops using the vault by itself.

The square code on your kit. It does not contain your 24 words or anything that opens the vault. It links to your kit's certificate — when, where (city and network only) and how the kit was made, and each time it was printed or shown again. Scan it and press E-mail me a code: the details appear only after you enter the code sent to the e-mail on your licence, and the page tells you whether it was issued for a live vault on your account. It can't check the words printed on your page — keep the copy you've tested. The certificate is sealed on your Mac; we cannot read it.

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, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces, 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. In Storage, the drive in use has Switch off <drive>. It asks first — Switch off <drive>? — because while it's off your files stay where they are, but nothing opens on your Mac, in Finder or on the web until you reconnect it. Nothing is deleted: 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. Straight afterwards you're offered Undo — reconnect <drive>.

While it is off, no screen lists or downloads anything, syncing pauses and no background work touches it. The window says Your drive is switched off — nothing has been deleted, and your files, folders and settings are exactly as you left them — and lists every drive that can come back, each with its own Reconnect <drive> button, the one you were using first, plus See all your drives…. Reconnecting needs nothing set up again. Delta Trust backups are separate and carry on as normal.

In a browser, you can look at any of your drives. The website opens on your active drive and has a Viewing picker in the sidebar. Choosing another drive there changes only what this browser shows — you can read Delta Drive on the web while your Mac uses your own storage. To make it the active drive, open Storage and choose Make <drive> my active drive…, which asks first. The browser remembers what you were viewing until you close it, and goes back to the active drive whenever the active drive changes. The sidebar shows how up to date the viewed drive's index is.

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 email a one-time code that works once and lasts fifteen minutes. It's 12 characters — upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols, with no look-alikes such as l, I and 1 or O and 0 — and case-sensitive, so copy and paste it (the box has a Paste button; stray spaces don't matter).

Delta Drive on your other Macs. Unlike Delta Trust, Delta Drive works on several devices at once, with nothing to set up: on another Mac with an active Storage Studio licence (not a trial) on the same email, it connects by itself and opens the same drive. Each Mac has its own access. Up to five devices can be connected; Devices… in the Delta Drive window's gear menu lists them, and Remove stops another Mac's access and frees its place — your files stay put. Need more? Contact support. Disconnect this Mac… in the same menu takes this Mac off without deleting anything; Reconnect this Mac brings it back.

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 are copied into Delta Drive and kept up to date, so

they open from any browser. The folder on your Mac stays as it is; nothing is removed from it.

  • 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, but it cannot open them — open them on that Mac.

  • Both, in sync — copied into Delta Drive, and the drive's copy is kept on your Mac too so

it opens without a connection. Uses more space, and survives either one going away.

Change the mode at any time from the folder's menu or the Copies screen. Nothing in your drive or your folder is deleted when you change it or unlink it — files already copied into the drive stay there, whole, even after a switch to offline only. It only ever goes one way — deleting something on your Mac does not delete it from the drive.

Synced folders. A Synced folder lives on your Mac and in your drive, and a change on either side — a new file, an edit, a deletion — is made on the other side too, automatically. (A Linked folder only feeds the drive and never deletes there; a Synced folder keeps both sides the same.) Open the folder in Delta Drive where it should appear and choose Add ▸ Sync a folder…, or right-click a folder ▸ Sync a folder into “…”…. Pick the folder on your Mac and which way changes go:

  • Both ways (recommended) — change it on either side and the other follows.
  • Mac → Drive — your Mac is the master copy.
  • Drive → Mac — what lands in your drive appears on your Mac.

The first sync is careful: Both ways combines the two sides and deletes nothing; one way stops and asks before removing anything from the other side. Nothing is ever deleted for good — a file a sync removes or replaces goes to your Mac's Trash or to the drive's Trash, where it can be put back. When both sides changed the same file, Newer wins (the other copy goes to the Trash), or choose Keep both to save the other copy beside it, renamed with where it came from and the date. If one sync would remove more than 50 files or more than a fifth of the folder, it stops before removing anything and the folder's badge turns orange — open Sync settings… and choose Sync anyway or Keep paused. Sync settings also changes the direction, the conflict rule and deletions (Never delete copies a deleted file back instead), and pauses or stops it — stopping deletes nothing on either side. Delete on both sides, into the Trash is the default deletion rule; on your Mac, removed files go to the Mac's Trash in a folder named "<folder> — removed by sync <date>". A sync also stops and asks if every file on one side changed at once (restoring a backup can do that). The folder's right-click menu has Sync now, Pause syncing / Resume syncing, Show … on this Mac and Stop syncing….

It's light on your Mac: it waits until you've stopped changing files (about 45 seconds), checks the drive every 15 minutes, runs one folder at a time, and holds off while your Mac is busy, hot, low on battery or on a metered connection. A folder that isn't there — an unplugged disk — is never treated as "everything was deleted".

Moving or renaming a synced folder (or a folder it's inside), here or on the web, keeps it synced — the sync follows it; moving it to the trash pauses syncing and leaves your Mac's copy alone, and a folder moved in Finder on the same disk is followed too. A file moved out of a synced folder counts as deleted from it, so for Both ways and Drive → Mac its copy on your Mac goes to the Trash. Linked folders stay at the top of your drive; renaming one keeps the link.

A small arrow on the folder's icon says it's synced and which way. Some folders can't be synced: a whole drive, your home folder, system folders, a folder Storage Studio moved to your external drive, folders iCloud Drive manages, anything inside Shared or Team, folders that are linked or overlap another synced one, and drive folders holding "offline only" placeholders.

Browsing. Three views (Icons, List, Details — Details with sortable column headings, including Date created — when the item arrived in your drive; anything from before we started recording that shows a dash), a Sort by menu covering Name, Kind, Size, Date modified and Date created, 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, so it opens straight away if it hasn't changed; it's tidied away after the number of days you choose, or when you choose Delete downloaded copies from this Mac in the gear menu — never while the file is open in its app), Always on this Mac (kept on purpose, works with no network), plus marks for shared, versioned, linked and commented. A folder shows where it is only when you keep it on this Mac.

Opening the window shows the folder you last saw at once, then checks it with the drive. Coming back to the window refreshes a folder that's more than a minute old, so changes made on the web or another Mac just appear, and a brief network blip is retried rather than failing.

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. The screen opens on the last list it showed you and refreshes it; if the drive is slow to answer it says so, with Try again.

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 (on your Mac, under Mark) to pin it to the sidebar. Favourites are personal: only you see them — never the people you share with — they're the same wherever you sign in, each drive keeps its own, and they 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. Right-click a file or folder — in the app or in a browser — and choose Share…. Under Who can open it there are two kinds:

  • People you invite — only the addresses you name. They sign in with a 12-character code

emailed to them, which creates no account and no password; it works once and lasts fifteen minutes. You choose What they can do and Stops working after: 1 day, 7 days, 30 days or 90 days. Throwaway addresses are refused as you create the share, naming the address.

  • Anyone with the link — a public link, below.

Every share expires on its own; there is no "forever". You can see who opened a share and what they downloaded, and withdraw it at any moment — anyone signed in stops immediately.

Public links ("Anyone with the link"). You get an address at storagestudio.us/s/… that anyone who has it can open to view what you shared — and download only if you tick Allow downloads. It always ends: Stops working after 1, 7 (the default), 30 or 90 days, the longest. Optionally add a password (in the link's settings), Max views, Max downloads, a daily and a total data limit (GB), Show my email on the page (your name is always shown) and Email me the first time it's opened. The link is shown once — Your link — copy it now; your Mac keeps a copy, and anywhere else you make a new one from Shares with New link… (the old one stops working at once).

Visitors can't comment, upload, change anything or pass it on. They pass a quick automatic check before the first view, automated tools are turned away, and the pages aren't listed by search engines. When a limit is reached the link pauses, says why in a plain sentence, and we email you once. Unusual traffic — a sudden spike, visits from many countries, or being embedded on other websites — suspends a link automatically and we let you know; only we can lift a suspension. A drive that is switched off or over its plan's storage shows nothing through its links. If public links are switched off across the service for a while, the share sheet says Public links are switched off right now. Invite people by email instead.

Shares. The Shared screen in the app (Shares on the web) has three tabs. Shared by me and Shared with me are file lists like My Drive, showing the shares that are active now — right-click any item for its actions (manage, copy the link, extend, email again, activity or withdraw for yours; open, download, copy the link or remove from your list for ones shared with you), and open a folder you shared to browse it. Sharing stats has the totals, charts of opens and downloads over time, and one list of every share: active ones by default, or History (ended, withdrawn or removed) and All, with removable filter chips, 25 / 50 / 100 per page, bulk actions and Export CSV. Share… on one file or folder shows only that item's shares.

On a share: Copy link / Open link; Extend by 7 or 30 days, to the Longest allowed (a year by default — there is no "never") or Pick a date…; Rename; Email again to re-send the invitation; Add people or remove someone; Permissions per person; Activity; and Withdraw, which asks first. A withdrawn share stays withdrawn — Share again makes a new share, with a new link, for the same items, people and permissions. An expired one comes back with Reactivate and a new date. A live share can't be deleted from the list — withdraw it, then Delete from list. Under Shared with me each share says From <address> and when you last opened it, with Remove from my list and Contact sender (or Ask for access again). We record roughly where a share was opened from — the country and region, and the city when city recording is switched on for the service — never the visitor's address itself.

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. If they have a drive of their own, it also appears inside it under Shared, in a folder named after the address it came from — not copied, and gone the moment the share is withdrawn or ends.

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. You can edit your own comment in a browser (it's marked edited), or withdraw it, and the thread keeps a marker 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. On your Mac, right-click anything for Note… (private) and Comments… (shared) side by side. The owner of a file can export its comments to Word, with who said what, when, and who reacted.

Viewing files in a browser. Click a file in Delta Drive on the web and it opens right there — for you and for the people you've shared it with: pictures (HEIC included), SVG, PDF, video and audio, text and code with syntax colouring, Markdown (formatted or plain), JSON (checked, with the line and column of any mistake, and a tree view), CSV and TSV as a table, web pages (shown safely — no scripts, and no pictures from other sites unless the owner allows them), Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OpenDocument files, and the contents of ZIP-style archives. Step to the previous or next file in the folder, search inside it (⌘F / Ctrl+F, with match case and regular expressions), copy, download, print, go full screen, wrap lines, change the font size or open the raw file.

Reviewing together. A comment in the viewer can point at exactly what it's about — a line or lines, a page, an area or point on a page or slide, a moment in a video, spreadsheet cells, a paragraph or highlighted text — with who wrote it and when. Reply, react, edit your own, and Resolve a conversation when it's done (Show resolved brings them back). Turn a comment into a Task or a Checklist with someone to do it and a due date, and filter by Open, Resolved, Mine, Mentions me or Tasks (open, done, yours or overdue). Type @ to mention someone who can already open the file — only they can be mentioned, and they're emailed. Suggest a change proposes new wording for highlighted text. Each file has a review status — Not reviewed, In review, Approved or Changes requested — showing who approved it. You can copy a link to one comment, and if the text a comment was made on has gone, it says so. As the owner you also get Viewed by…, Lock comments / Unlock comments, Show resolved comments on public links (off by default — public-link visitors otherwise see no comments), and Export comments (CSV) or (Markdown).

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). Delete downloaded copies from this Mac clears the kept copies without touching the drive itself. The same gear menu holds Reload what's on screen and Recreate anything missing…, 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.

Colours, marks and folder indexes. Right-click a file or folder — in the app or in a browser — for Colour (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Grey or No colour; anyone you share it with sees it), Mark (Favourite, Star, Heart, Like or Dislike — choosing the same again clears it — Follow up… with an optional due date, Remind me… at a date and time; marks, Favourites included, are yours alone) and, on a folder or on empty space inside the folder you are in, Create index (this folder, or everything inside). The index appears as an Index icon, the first item inside that folder, in the app and in your browser on every device. It lists the folder's contents with notes, open and download buttons, is always up to date (it says when it last updated, and Update now checks again), and is not a file — nothing is added to the folder. In the Mac app the folder's index opens in its own window — move it, resize it, keep it open beside your files — with search (⌘F), filters by kind, size, date modified and location, sortable columns, and Copy as CSV / Export CSV…; an Index button appears in the toolbar at the bottom of Delta Drive whenever the folder you are in has one. Marked & due lists everything you have coloured or marked, filtered by colour, mark (Favourites, Starred, Hearted, Liked, Disliked, Follow-up, Reminders) or Due now and searchable by name, with Clear filter. A reminder or follow-up that comes due shows as Due and your Mac shows one notification — clicking it opens the item; never by e-mail, and Storage Studio needs to be running (it checks every 10 minutes). Colours and marks follow an item when it is moved or renamed, go into the Trash with it and come back on Put back, and go when it's deleted for good. Each drive keeps its own.

The Trash shows where each item came from, when it was deleted and by whom (a Mac by name, On the web, someone you shared it with, or A synced folder), its size (folders: size and item count), its kind and when it last changed. Your storage doesn't record when a file was created, so that column shows "—", and items deleted before 29 October 2026 say Before 29 Oct 2026 — exact time not recorded. The top says how many items there are and how much space they take — the Trash counts towards your storage. Right-click for Put back (to the folder it came from, never replacing anything — a clash comes back as "name (2)", and a folder that has gone is made again), Put back to…, Download, Open a read-only copy, Get info, Copy name, Show original location and Delete for good. Nothing in the Trash is removed automatically.

Locking a folder. Folder locking is on for every Delta Drive account. On your Mac, right-click a folder in the Delta Drive window ▸ Lock…. Choose a 6-digit PIN and enter it again; add a hint if you like — it's never shown in the app, E-mail me my hint sends it to you, and it must not contain the PIN — then confirm with the one-time code we email you. Locking carries on by itself in the background (Continue in background closes the window): if Storage Studio quits, your Mac restarts or the internet drops, it picks up where it left off. You see live progress with Pause and Resume; Stop and undo puts the folder back as it was (PIN and emailed code), and while a lock is being removed Stop and keep it locked returns it to locked. A locked folder shows a green lock (red while open, orange if locking was interrupted), the names of the files inside are protected too, and it never appears in Finder.

"(kept)" files. A change made in Finder that hadn't reached your drive when the folder was locked isn't lost and never goes to the drive unprotected: it's saved into the locked folder, locked, as "name (kept)" — open the folder to compare and keep whichever you want. The same change is kept only once.

To open it, double-click (or right-click ▸ Unlock…) and enter your PIN and the code we email you. An unlocked locked folder opens right in Delta Drive — double-click to go in and open files; right-click it for Lock status…, Lock now, Lock again after and Remove lock…. While it's open: Open a file, Save a copy… or Add files… (while it's still being locked, open and save copies only). An opened file is a private copy on your Mac, deleted when the folder locks again — changes to it are not saved back, so use Add files… for a new version. Folders can't be added to a locked folder (add the files inside them), and files can't be moved into one. It locks again after 5, 15 (the default), 30 or 60 minutes without use, when your Mac sleeps, its screen locks or Storage Studio quits, or on Lock now.

Big locked folders open fast: only what you open is downloaded. Inside one, the Icons, List and Details views, Sort by, search and multi-select work as everywhere else. Right-click a file, a folder or a selection ▸ Decrypt to this Mac… to save decrypted copies in a folder you choose — they're yours, they stay when the folder locks again, and nothing on your drive changes.

Forgot PIN… asks for the 24 words of your recovery kit and a code we email you, then shows your PIN once; a folder locked without a recovery kit can't have its PIN recovered. If you forget the PIN and lose your recovery kit, the folder can never be opened again — Storage Studio can't recover it for you. Remove lock… turns it back into an ordinary folder; to change a PIN or hint, remove the lock and lock the folder again. Only someone with both your PIN and your email can open a locked folder — not someone holding your files, your Mac or your email alone. Storage Studio never opens a locked folder, and our support team can't unlock one for anyone. (Finder's own Locked checkbox only stops a file being changed or deleted by accident — it doesn't keep anyone out.) You can't lock a synced or linked folder, a folder from your Mac that's copied to the drive, a folder kept on your Mac, one of the folders your drive came with, or a folder inside a locked folder or containing one. A locked folder can't be opened in a browser or in Finder — the website shows it as Locked — open it in Storage Studio on your Mac.