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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, and "Let automatic rules tidy protected folders" — off unless you turn it on, so the nightly run leaves Documents, Desktop, Downloads and the Trash alone; the actions you start yourself are unaffected). The automatic run happens once a day at about 3 AM, at the first calm moment — the Mac idle, not low on battery, not in a call — and catches up later that day if the Mac was asleep. 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 and 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.

Privacy — usage and crash reports

Settings → Privacy has one switch: Send usage and crash reports. Storage Studio works exactly the same with it on or off.

  • What it covers. Crash reports (what the app was doing when it

closed unexpectedly, with the names of your files and folders removed); performance numbers (memory used, how full your Mac's drive is, how many moves are running); usage (when the app starts, how much space it has saved and moved, the country and region your Mac connects from, which website link your download came from, and which feature a locked screen stopped you using); and a summary of your storage (rough percentages by file type and drive, the cloud services you've connected with email addresses removed, how much space they use, and how many files of each type they hold). Never your file contents, the names of your files and folders, passwords, or your clipboard.

  • Always on. Checking your licence or trial and looking for updates

happen either way, because Storage Studio needs them to work. While it's open, Storage Studio checks in with us every few minutes so new versions, changed settings and messages for you arrive within minutes; with the switch off, a check-in carries only an anonymous id for your Mac, the app version and your choice. Feedback and diagnostic logs for support have their own controls.

  • The default. On, unless you're in the European Union, the UK or

Switzerland — there Storage Studio asks the first time you use it, and nothing is sent until you answer. It works this out from the country you registered with and your Mac's region setting.

  • Turning it off. Reports stop straight away. Anything counted but

not yet sent is thrown away, and the storage summary we held for your Mac is deleted. Turn it back on any time.