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).