The menu bar icon and popover
Storage Studio lives in the menu bar. A small coloured dot on its icon shows its state and a number shows notifications. Clicking opens the Home window or, in the Advanced view, a popover; right-clicking opens a short menu.
Storage Studio lives in your menu bar, next to the clock. A small coloured dot on its icon tells you its state at a glance, and a number in the corner counts notifications that need you. Click the icon to open Storage Studio; right-click it for a short menu.
What the icon tells you
When everything is fine there is no dot. Otherwise one dot shows the most important thing going on:
| Dot | Meaning |
|---|---|
| None | All normal |
| Green, pulsing | Working — a clear-up, a move or a copy is running |
| Orange | Automatic actions are paused, or your Mac is low on space |
| Red | Your external drive isn't connected or isn't the expected disk, your Mac is critically low on space, or your licence isn't active |
| Yellow | Full Disk Access isn't granted |
By default, "low" means less than 40 GB free on your built-in disk and "critically low" means less than 15 GB. A number at the top-right of the icon counts notifications that need your attention; it uses the colour of the most serious one and goes away when there are none left. In Demo Mode the icon changes to a record symbol.
Clicking the icon
What opens depends on the view you've chosen in Interface settings:
- Intelligence (the default for new installs) opens the Storage Studio window on its Home screen.
- Advanced opens the popover described below.
Right-click (or Control-click) the icon for: Settings…, Eject your drive, More… (the full tools menu), Turn On Demo Mode…, Restart Storage Studio, Quit Storage Studio and About Storage Studio.
The Advanced popover
The popover's header line sums up the state, for example All systems normal, Internal disk low, External drive disconnected or Paused — automatic actions disabled. Below it are status rows, buttons such as Free Up Space Now, Run Rules Only and Dry Run, and Pause / Resume.
Flowchart outline: How the popover decides which state to show
- Open the popover
- leads to Is the background service running?
- Is the background service running?
- No: leads to Service is stopped: Start Service
- Yes: leads to Automatic actions paused?
- Automatic actions paused?
- Yes: leads to Paused: click Resume
- No: leads to Is your drive connected?
- Is your drive connected?
- No: leads to External drive disconnected
- Yes: leads to Normal: space and status
- Service is stopped. The background service isn't running. Click Start Service. After that, Storage Studio starts it each time the app opens. If it won't stay started, see "Service is stopped" won't go away.
- Paused. Pause halts automatic actions while the service keeps running; Resume turns them back on. See Pausing or stopping everything.
- External drive disconnected. Work that needs the drive waits until you plug it back in. See When your drive is disconnected.
The footer has Log (⌘L), Rules, Inspect (⌘I), Help (⌘?), More, and a power button to quit (⌘Q). More lists every other window, the Legal documents, Share Your Experience… and a Setup & maintenance submenu with Re-run Setup Wizard…, Check for updates, Verify configuration…, Start at login, Restart Storage Studio…, Reset Storage Studio… and Uninstall Storage Studio…. To go back to the calmer window, choose More → Switch to Intelligence view….
If the icon doesn't appear at all, see The menu bar icon doesn't appear.
See also: The Learning Center and notifications, Keyboard shortcuts, The Preferences window.