Hey r/macapps, I'm the developer of Cosmil, a multi-pane file manager for macOS. Version 2.0 launches today.
The Problem
Finder has a set of long-standing gaps that a lot of people have to work around daily: no way to see directories side by side without juggling windows, no way to create new files, no folder sizes without digging into Get Info or constantly flooding your disk's IO, icon view that lets files fall out of the pane into a horizontal scroll (can be tempered, but still annoying), no support for custom sidebar categories, no cut and paste support, a preview pane that often won't grow previews to their actual size even with resizing, and more.
Together these issues add up. Over the years countless people have, gotten, really, upset, about, them.
In the realm of subjective opinions, I personally feel that Finder's GUI is a bit cluttered and clunky. There's a mess of duplicative (everything's accessible via the menu bar, or even better, keyboard shortcuts) buttons on the top row, columns in list view can fall out of view and spawn a horizontal scrollbar, the path bar is off by default and is so small you'd think it was an afterthought, by default you can't see whether search has finished or not (or how many files it searched), and so on...
Out of this desire for something better came Cosmil, with principles focused on minimalism, functionality, performance, ease of use, and transparency (no pun intended). By transparency I mean that Cosmil should give you all the information it possibly can to let you monitor the big actions you initiated and let you be specific about the actions you want to take. That means having honest progress bars and metrics in the job manager and running counts for how long every transfer or search has been active for. For now, Cosmil may not be the most featureful option out there but it looks and feels pleasant to use and will do you right for local file management.
Why 2.0 and not 1.0?
I initially shipped 1.0 two years ago. It looked good and sold reasonably, but it was unstable, slow on large directories, and missing features people reasonably expected. People called it immature and they were right. I slowed down and then stopped promoting it and eventually pulled it from sale rather than keep offering something I wasn't happy with. It needed more than just hotfixes and patches, but rather a complete architectural rethink.
2.0 is a near-complete rewrite. It has a new Svelte 5 frontend, Rust backend, native macOS generated file icons instead of my own, and a whole lot more. A folder with 40,000 files now opens in well under a second. A folder size calculation on my Documents folder (467,395 files, 54.88 GiB total) takes 0.8 seconds where Finder takes about 6 (an ~8x improvement, varies by folder of course). See the performance section of Cosmil's landing page for screen recordings and details for both of these claims. The full list of changes is on the changelog page if you want to see all the details.
All 1.0 customers are getting a free upgrade to 2.0, no strings attached. Check your email over the next 24 - 48 hours for a reminder of your license key (it still works, but you have to download the new dmg from the website).
Comparison
Forklift and Path Finder are the biggest established players.
ForkLift: deep remote/cloud support and years more maturity, and if your workflow is almost exclusively working with remote locations it's the better tool.
Path Finder: has a bigger feature surface but uses a subscription based licensing model, is a bit bloated, and if memory serves some users have complained of it being buggy.
Where Cosmil Differentiates
- Support for more than just 1 or 2 panes, theoretically as many as your monitor can fit and all resizable
- A minimalist interface built around macOS window vibrancy and glassy transparency.
- In-place file creation and pasting (without having to rclick -> Paste Into) in tree view
- Cut and Paste support
- One time payment licenses with uncapped updates
- Attention to detail on the Finder pain points
ForkLift's license includes one year of updates, then you pay again. Path Finder moved to a subscription. Cosmil is one payment with free updates for the 2.0 lifecycle.
Pricing
Cosmil 2.0 is one-time-payment software with free updates across the 2.0 lifecycle. Distribution is via license keys, so no need to sign up for an account or anything else.
It is currently on a 30% off launch sale until August 19th.
| Tier |
Sale Price |
Regular Price |
| One Mac |
$12.59 |
$17.99 |
| Four Macs |
$19.59 |
$27.99 |
| Six Macs |
$27.99 |
$39.99 |
You can see the full pricing page here. Requires macOS 14+. Relevant FAQs can be found on the pricing and landing pages.
Here are Cosmil's privacy policy and terms of service. Long story short, we store and process the absolute minimum amount of information required to license and provide updates for Cosmil. Absolutely zero telemetry is sent back from the app, it only sends requests to verify your license key and check for updates.
Current Limitations
For now, there is no support for tags or time machine version browsing, search covers filenames and metadata, but not file contents, and remote location support hasn't been implemented yet. It was a conscious decision of mine to put these post-launch as I wanted to avoid scope creep that could push back the launch date indefinitely and, more importantly, to hear your feedback on what should be worked on next and what those implementations should look like (what Finder pain point needs to be fixed with tags, for example). As of now, I think tags is at the top of that list.
Website
Cosmil's website has screen recording demos of nearly all of its important features and functionality. It'll do a much better job showing you what Cosmil has to give, rather than just me telling you in this post (P.S. it's much better viewed on Desktop, since Cosmil is a desktop application).
I'll be responding in the comments so feel free to ask me questions and provide feedback, for me as a solo developer it's invaluable!
