We are building the next generation file manager and we need your help!

[terpua]

Hello.

For the past year, we have been working on a new app called Filehouse. Filehouse is the next generation file manager and we are excited to release the alpha version for testing to all of you.

Filehouse combines your local and cloud files into customizable views and integrates with any available API so you can combine files with other data sources like photos, Notion, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.

Today, our files and data are everywhere…external drive, Google Drive, iPhone, laptop, PC, usb drive, Dropbox, etc., but our default file managers were built when there was only 1 hard drive (1980’s). Forty years later, file managers have remained largely the same…generic file browsers that have generic views and work as an island and only works with files.

Filehouse approaches this modern problem that by solving 2 interconnected problems: data fragmentation (our files are everywhere) AND the consumption of those data once they are all in one place because listing all your files in alphabetical order per storage is not the way to access all that data.

Filehouse solves the first problem (data fragmentation) by having built-in connections to cloud storages without having to install syncing clients. In addition, our “viewing container” (explained below) is essentially a “data sandbox” where the data could come from a local hard drive, GitHub or an API, which allows different data sources to be combined. For example, let’s say you are working on a project and you use OneDrive but your project partners are on Google Drive and Dropbox. You can combine files from any of the 3 cloud storages into one “viewing container”.

Filehouse solves the second problem (consuming) by having a highly customizable “viewing container” called widgets. Current file managers presents files in a generic view with some ways to “customize” via sorting and seeing the files as a list or as icons and that’s about it. Widgets are built-in “viewing containers” that allow you to mix+match files and data into your own customized views that you can interact with. The screenshots below explains it much better…

For this initial alpha version, we have built 3 widgets (notes, folder, workspace) and have built-in support for Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. We plan on building a GCal widget, a Gmail attachments widget, a Notion widget and much more depending on feedback. Widgets can be anything and that is what’s so exciting!

If you are intrigued, we encourage you to help us test and post your feedback (or support) queries on this thread. For this alpha release, we have Mac support only but if you want one for Windows or Linux, let us know below.

This project is in its very early stages and the main point of this alpha release is to get feedback.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy Filehouse, a connected and customizable file manager for the modern user.

Alpha version 1.0.0.01274 (Mac only) — https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/test_builds/filehouse/Filehouse-1.0.0.01274.dmg

Known issues:

• Clicking a root folder label in location widget will not open its URL
• Dropbox files have no thumbnails
• Location folders that are deleted in their source provider may still appear in widget file selection

[bayindirh]

Hello,

First of all, I must say that the idea look pretty neat. Also the execution of the whole idea, inside a single application looks pleasing to the eyes. It feels like a file oriented Trello, without the flow. This is not a bad thing in my eyes. A novel approach to a workspace.

On the other hand, sandboxing the data, files and state means there’s a lot of abstractions are going on. This probably uses and shares a lot of code with InSync’s internals, but does this also means I should have to sync everything to local to be able to use it with speed? Or will it contain the smart sync features discussed earlier for InSync?

Another question is, how my files will be available outside this app? Are they will be in different folders? Will they be pulled, opened and pushed back again?

Most importantly (at least for me) will it affect InSync development speed, quality or future? There are some features added into it to make it a more serious contender, and there are some features that are needed, and there are some more features that can be added to make it an even better tool for syncing files.

I’d love to explore the technical aspects myself, but the Mac computer I have is a work machine, and I can’t just install Alpha software on it at will. If there’s a Linux version, I can play with it in a VM and report in a much detailed manner.

Thanks for all the hard work, and wish good luck with the development,

Cheers,

H.

[terpua]

thanks for the feedback!

yes, we are thinking of adding local syncing but since this replaces your default file manager, “smart sync” is essentially built in so it’s not necessary for speed since the browsing aspect is essentially cached. the local syncing will (at least for v1) follow the widget names as folders so you can access it using command line or your default file manager.

re: insync development – what features are needed? what features can be added?

yeah, we have a working linux version but it doesn’t have feature parity with the mac esp file previews. but if you are interested, i can have a build sent over to you.

thanks again

[bayindirh]

Hey, you’re welcome.

First of all, I can wait until the Linux version gets feature parity with the leading version. Pandemic is still wreaking havoc in my schedule, so, I can’t certainly say that I can sit in front of my computer this day, give it a three hour shake-down and write a nice feedback post about it.

From your description, I understand that the tool is designed for a specific demographic primarily: The worker who opens a lot of files to be edited in office applications or similar tools. There’s nothing wrong with that, and providing a distract-free portal for this demographic can be seriously productivity boosting tool, so I think FileHouse certainly it has its place on this software ecosystem. On the other hand, the tools like InSync and other cloud clients allows us (developers) to integrate cloud files to headless applications, IDEs and automatons. So, if smart-sync capabilities are tied to the UI itself and not trickled down to filesystem level, Filehouse may not help some of the people, since automated tools expect to find the file there, but willing to wait the I/O operation to complete to access the file.

So, if FileHouse is planned to replace InSync in the future, this mode of operation will not be very helpful. Especially, killer features like .gitignore-like ignore files, out-of-tree sync capabilities and other small features put InSync into a very special and irreplaceable place. While left unanswered, from my point of view, my vote for replacing InSync with FileHouse is a hard no at this point. In my use case, InSync is a part of a few automatic flows already. It monitors some out of tree folders, syncs them to a particular cloud, and another InSync client sync them to a different file tree on another computer, so it’s a very nice custom adapter, amongst many things.

For the features InSync need and might benefit, again from my PoV, can be summarized as follows:

Needs:

• macOS memory leak problems: I know it’s rare, but it’s real.
• Ability to snooze notifications for a time: Business accounts get noisy and distracting sometimes.
• Ability to set number of parallel transfers: Lower bandwidth connections suffer a lot from parallel transfers.
• Automatic and manual bandwidth controls: There’s just a lot of use cases for this capabilities.
• Upper limits for auto-syncing of new items: Nextcloud has a setting to limit automatically sync new files and folders. E.g.: My client doesn’t sync new files and folders bigger than 500MB unless I give permission to it. This prevents my disks to fill inadvertently when colleagues start to add folders into a work folder.
• Integration with Nextcloud: Nextcloud is very popular with on-premise enterprise storage and self-hosting community. These communities also have other accounts too. Why not give these guys the ability to use a single client with all their accounts?
• Ability to hide features that I don’t have a license for: I know these stay visible for a reason, but as a developer, I won’t buy a company plan soon, so having an icon which tells me that I don’t have the feature is cluttering the UI a little.

Nice to have:

• Smart Sync: Actually, this is a need, but it’s hard to develop and integrate at file system level. However, if it can be done, it’ll allow many to replace Linux Dropbox client.
• Google Photos Sync: I think there was an effort to make it happen, and I use Google Photos, and being able to access them from my disk would be a huge plus.
• Color theme obeying icon: This is a proper nitpick, but almost all icons in my Linux system is obeying the system colors automatically. Insync is one of the few which ignores these colors.

Hope this is useful and I’m not so far off from the target by misunderstanding something essential. Thanks for giving us InSync and being responsive and communicative.

Cheers,

H.

[Abejo]

Totally agree, I would like to see more inSync options, integration with Google Photos, with the Telegram cloud, SMB folder synchronization, etc.

[fox]

Hello. This new file manager looks interesting, and I would be happy to help with the testing once a binary Linux version is available.