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Float's panel is a visual file picker — everything you've touched recently, sorted so the latest is on top. Most things here work the way you'd expect a Mac panel to work.

• ● Your recent files appear as a thumbnail grid, newest first.
• ● Click a file to open it in its default app (or whatever Finder treats as the default for that file type).
• ● Right-click for the context menu — see the Right-click context menu section below for the full list.
• ● Cmd+Click to multi-select. Most actions work on a selection.
• ● Switch between watched folders with the folder tabs at the top; in Advanced view, the dropdown shows all folders if you watch many.

Float's preview is built for fast confirmation — see what you're about to share before you share it. There are two preview paths and they do slightly different things.

• ● Press Enter on a selected file to open Float's inline preview. Works for images, PDFs, documents, and many text formats. The preview shows the file at full resolution and includes an Extract Text button (OCR).
• ● Press Spacebar instead to open the file in macOS Quick Look. Useful for video, code files, and anything Float's modal doesn't render natively.
• ● Press Enter again or Escape to dismiss either view.
• ● Hover your cursor over a file briefly for a hover preview. The delay is tunable in Settings → File Display (set to 0 to disable, or longer if it triggers too eagerly).

Float runs Apple's Vision framework on-device to pull text out of any image or PDF. No external OCR app, no cloud upload — recognition happens locally on your Mac, and the text lands on your clipboard ready to paste.

• ● Three ways to trigger: right-click → Extract Text, press Enter to open the preview then click Extract Text, or press ⌘K and run the Extract Text command.
• ● Supported formats: PNG, JPG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, GIF, WebP, and PDF.
• ● Multi-page PDFs: Float extracts text from every page in order.
• ● Extracted text appears inside the preview with a Copy Text button. Click it and the text is on your clipboard.
• ● Large or malformed PDFs hit a 2-minute graceful deadline so the app never locks up. If extraction times out, try splitting the PDF.
• ● If the text view is empty, macOS Vision couldn't recognize anything — usually means the image is too low-resolution, the text is too stylized, or it's a handwritten note Vision can't parse.
• ● Extract Text is a premium feature, included with a license. It works for the full 14-day trial too.

Float's context menu adapts to what you've selected — some items only appear when they're useful. Here's the full list and when each one shows up.

• ● Open / Open N Files — opens the file(s) in their default app.
• ● Reveal in Finder — opens Finder with the file selected.
• ● Copy File Path / Copy File Paths — text path(s) to your clipboard. Useful for terminal commands or pasting into spreadsheets.
• ● Copy as PNG — only appears for non-PNG image formats (JPEG, JPG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP). Converts the image and puts image data on the clipboard (not a file reference) so it pastes inline into WhatsApp Web, Slack, Mail, Messenger, Discord, and similar web compose fields.
• ● Extract Text — only appears for images and PDFs. See the OCR section above.
• ● Remove Metadata — only appears for JPEG and PNG files. Strips EXIF data (location, device, camera settings) and saves a clean copy next to the original. Worth running on screenshots you're about to share publicly.
• ● Move to Trash — sends the file to your system Trash. You can restore from Finder until you empty it.

Pinned files stay at the top of your panel no matter how old they get or which folder they're in. Use this for the handful of files you reach for constantly — brand assets, an active spec doc, a logo you keep dropping into emails.

• ● Hover over a file and click the pin icon in the bottom corner.
• ● A Pinned section appears at the top of the panel; pinned files live there until you unpin.
• ● Click the pin icon again to unpin. Or press P while a file is selected to toggle.
• ● Pins persist across panel hides, app restarts, and machine reboots.

Staging lets you collect files from anywhere — different watched folders, different file types — into one batch before acting on them. Built for the moment you realize you need to send six things at once.

• ● Click files to stage them, or right-click and choose Stage.
• ● Drag the staging bar (or any single thumbnail in it) into another app to drop the whole batch at once. Works in Mail, Slack, Figma, Finder, anywhere that accepts file drops.
• ● Zip compresses every staged file into a single archive and copies it to your clipboard.
• ● Copy copies the staged paths to your clipboard (text format).
• ● History shows your recent staging sessions — useful when you cleared by mistake and want the batch back.
• ● Clear empties the staging bar without moving anything.
• ● Staging persists when you hide and re-show the panel; it clears when you quit Float.

The Command Bar lets you search files and run actions without lifting your hands off the keyboard. Press ⌘K from anywhere in the panel.

• ● Press ⌘K to open. Type to filter.
• ● Filters both files (by name) and actions (Toggle Theme, Open Settings, Copy File Path, Copy Staged Paths, Extract Text, etc.).
• ● ↑ / ↓ to move between results, Enter to run, Escape to dismiss.

Float is built keyboard-first. These work anywhere in the panel.

• ● Arrow keys — navigate the file grid.
• ● Enter — open Float's inline preview (with Extract Text for OCR).
• ● Spacebar — open the file in macOS Quick Look.
• ● Click — open the file in its default app.
• ● ⌘+Click — multi-select.
• ● P — pin or unpin the selected file.
• ● Delete — move the selected file to Trash.
• ● ⌘K — open the Command Bar.
• ● Escape — dismiss the panel.
• ● Global hotkey: set one in Settings → Shortcuts to toggle the panel from anywhere on your Mac, including fullscreen apps.

Float watches the folders you choose for new and modified files in real time. Add or remove them in Settings → Folders.

• ● Click Add Folder and pick any folder under your home directory.
• ● Toggle Include Subfolders per folder to recursively scan nested directories.
• ● Float uses macOS FSEvents under the hood — new files show up in the panel within a second of being written.
• ● Some folders may not be watchable: heavily-archived iCloud Desktop or Documents folders, folders with restrictive macOS permissions, network shares that don't emit FSEvents. Float surfaces a warning if it can't watch a folder you chose.
• ● Trial limit: 1 watched folder. Licensed: unlimited folders, all merged into one panel sorted by recency.

If a watched folder has a lot of files you don't care about — build artifacts, partial downloads, system noise — folder rules let you filter to only what matters.

• ● Click + Rules on a watched folder in Settings → Folders.
• ● Filter by file type: allow only specific extensions (.png, .pdf, etc.).
• ● Filter by filename pattern: glob expressions like *.txt or screenshot-*.
• ● Filter by file size: minimum and/or maximum.
• ● Filter by age: only show files newer than X days.
• ● Multiple rules ANDed: all conditions must match for a file to appear.
• ● Save and Float re-scans the folder automatically; the panel updates within a second.

Float comes with 12 color themes and 4 tray icon styles. Tune everything from Settings → Appearance.

• ● 12 themes: six day themes (Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Gold, Rose, etc.) and six night themes (Midnight, Deep Sea, Violet, Amber, etc.).
• ● Choose your mode: Day (always light), Night (always dark), Auto (matches macOS), or System (matches macOS but lets you pick the day-color and night-color separately).
• ● Tray icon styles (Settings → Appearance → Menu Bar Icon): Float (default, theme-color F), Colorful (full-color gradient), Framed (F inside a rounded frame), Split (two-tone).
• ● The tray icon has an active state — briefly brighter when a new file appears in a watched folder. Useful peripheral signal.

Float is localized in 6 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese. It auto-detects your macOS system language on first launch.

• ● Change language anytime from Settings → Language. The change is instant — no restart needed.
• ● If your macOS system language isn't one of the six supported, Float falls back to English.
• ● Every UI string, menu, setting, and notification is translated.
• ● Found a translation that reads wrong, or want another language added? Email hello@filefloat.app — we'd love to expand the list.

Bought Float? Your license key lives in Settings → License. The activation flow is straightforward; here's everything you might run into.

• ● After purchase, Lemon Squeezy emails your key. It looks like F••••••••-••••-••••-••••-••••••••••••.
• ● Activate: Settings → License, paste the key, click Activate. A green Thank-You card appears when it works.
• ● Each license activates on up to 3 Macs. To switch machines, click the green card → Deactivate; that frees a slot. Then activate on the new machine.
• ● Float re-validates your license with Lemon Squeezy every 14 days quietly in the background.
• ● Offline for more than 21 days? Float shows a warning. After 30 days fully offline, premium features lock until validation succeeds again.
• ● Lost your key: search your inbox for "Lemon Squeezy" or "Float license". If you still can't find it, email us with the email address you used to buy and we'll resend.
• ● "Wrong product" activation error: the key was issued by a different Lemon Squeezy store, or it's a test-mode key on a live build. Contact us; we'll figure out which.
• ● "Activation limit reached": you've activated 3 Macs. Deactivate one (Settings → License on that machine) to free a slot, or contact us if you can't reach the old machine.
• ● Refunds: 14 days from purchase, no questions asked. Email hello@filefloat.app.

Float checks for new versions daily and downloads updates silently in the background. When one's ready, you'll see a small "Update vX.Y.Z" button in the panel's status bar — click to install.

• ● Auto-updates are on by default. Settings → Updates lets you switch to manual mode if you'd rather control when updates land.
• ● The in-app update view shows the changelog before you install.
• ● Manual check: Settings → Updates → Check Now, or right-click the tray icon → Check for Updates.
• ● Critical updates may install automatically in rare cases — only when an existing version has a serious bug. This is the exception, not the rule.
• ● Updates are signed and verified before install via Apple notarization and Tauri's minisign signature — they can't be tampered with in transit. If verification fails, the update is rejected.

If something feels wrong — panel won't open, settings stuck, license acting strange — these are the escape hatches. Most are reachable without quitting Float.

• ● Right-click the tray icon for: Check for Updates, Reset Settings, Quit Float, and other recovery options.
• ● Terminal flags (run from /Applications/Float.app/Contents/MacOS/float): --help (see all flags), --check-update (force an update check), --reset (clear WebKit data, caches, and settings — keeps your license), --safe-mode (launch with defaults without modifying disk state).
• ● Panel won't appear after clicking the tray? Quit and reopen Float first. If that doesn't fix it, run --reset from Terminal.
• ● Thumbnails stuck loading or broken? Settings → Cache Management → Clear Cache. The thumbnail blacklist gets reset too, so files that previously failed to thumbnail will retry.
• ● License activation failing? The error message tells you which case: "wrong product", "activation limit reached", or a network error. See the License section above for what each means.
• ● Float opens on the wrong display in a multi-monitor setup? Settings → Display → Panel Position lets you switch between Docked-to-Tray and Center-Floating, or pin to a specific monitor.
• ● Tray icon disappeared? macOS occasionally drops menu bar items, especially after long sleeps or display changes. Quit + reopen Float restores it.
• ● Global hotkey not working? Another app may have claimed the same key combo. Settings → Shortcuts → pick a different combination, or disable the conflicting app's binding.
• ● iCloud-archived files (Desktop & Documents synced to iCloud) show in Float but won't preview until they're downloaded. Click the file once in Finder to trigger a download, then Float's preview will work.
• ● Permissions error when adding a folder? macOS Sequoia and later prompt for Full Disk Access in some cases. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access → enable Float.