Important
LLM disclosure: This codebase was written with substantial help from large language models: AI coding agents working from the AGENTS.md brief in this repo.
Screen-edge tabs that open drawers of your apps, files, folders, and links. Inspired by the classic DragThing. (Formerly known as MacDring.)
Latest release: v2.3.0 · Download
Tabs sit against the edges of your screens. Click one and a drawer slides out with whatever you put there. Drag files onto a tab to add them. Works across multiple monitors, and your tabs return to exactly where you left them after a restart.
Important
LLM Disclosure: Top Drawer was built with substantial help from large language models — primarily Anthropic's Claude, via Claude Code. Much of the code arrived through AI-authored commits and claude/* pull-request branches, with agent guidance kept in AGENTS.md
If you like this, also look at Zap (a ⌘-Tab switcher) and Jetty (a Dock replacement). Set an app's icon once in Pict and Top Drawer, Zap, and Jetty all draw it.
- Edge tabs → drawers. Colored tabs anchored to any screen edge; click (or hover) to open a drawer.
- Resizable notes drawers. Drag an exposed edge or corner to resize your scratchpad. Each notes tab remembers its size across restarts.
- Eight tab types — an items tab (apps, files, folders, links arranged freely in a grid with gaps), a notes tab (a live Markdown scratchpad: type formatted text, tick off task items, and show the formatting bar from the drawer header when you want the buttons), a folder tab (a live, read-only view of a directory's contents), a disks tab (your mounted ejectable volumes), a network tab (your mounted network shares), a cloud tab (your cloud drives — iCloud, Dropbox, …), a recents tab (what you've recently opened — from Top Drawer, the whole Mac via Spotlight, or both), and a fresh tab (files that just arrived — downloads, copies, saves). See the docs for the network & cloud and recents & fresh tabs.
- Holds anything launchable — applications, files, folders, and URLs. One click opens them.
- Drag-and-drop to add. Drop files or apps from Finder — or a link dragged from a browser's address bar — onto a tab or its open drawer.
- Spring-loaded drops. Drag a file onto a tab and its drawer springs open; the slot under your cursor highlights, and dropping there files the item into that slot — onto an app to open it with, onto a folder to move it in.
- Type to find. With a drawer open, just start typing to filter it; ↑/↓ move the selection, Return opens it, Esc clears (then closes). Shown on drawers with a handful of items or more.
- Trash item. Add a Trash to any tab (Settings → Tabs → Add Trash): click it to open the Trash, or drop files onto it to throw them away.
- Running-app dot. Application items show a small green dot when the app is running, updating live as apps launch and quit.
- Per-tab color, name, and glyph (SF Symbol or letters).
- Shared app icons. With Pict installed, right-click an app → Change …'s Icon Everywhere… sets that app's icon once and Zap and Jetty draw it too. Top Drawer also shows an app's real, un-masked artwork instead of macOS 26's grey squircle plate.
- Custom item icons. Right-click any item → Customize Icon… to give it a colored folder or rounded tile with an SF Symbol burned in (or pick an image file). Works on every tab — see the docs.
- Multi-monitor support. Tabs live on a specific display + edge and react live to displays connecting, disconnecting, and changing resolution.
- Stable restore. Tabs return to the same display and spot after a restart, resolution change, or reconnection.
- Optional per-tab hotkey to toggle drawers.
- Layout import / export. Back up or move your whole arrangement: Settings → Tabs has export/import buttons that save the tabs-and-items document as a JSON file and load it back (importing replaces the current layout, after a confirmation).
- Auto-hide / auto-fade tabs. Set a tab to get out of the way when idle (Settings → Tabs → When idle): Auto-hide slides it off its edge leaving a thin sliver, Auto-fade dims it in place (opacity adjustable in Settings → Appearance). Reveals the moment you move the pointer to that screen edge. Turn on Settings → General → Idle tabs → Reveal all hidden tabs together to have one reveal bring back every hidden tab at once (and hide them together when you leave).
Requires Xcode 16+ and macOS 13+.
# Build
xcodebuild -project MacDring.xcodeproj -scheme MacDring -configuration Debug build
# Release build
xcodebuild -project MacDring.xcodeproj -scheme MacDring -configuration Release build
# Run unit tests
xcodebuild -project MacDring.xcodeproj -scheme MacDring -destination 'platform=macOS' testFor a convenient local build, scripts/build.sh does an incremental Release build
and reveals the app in Finder on success; scripts/build.sh --clean resets any
wedged Xcode build daemons and rebuilds from scratch.
For day-to-day development, open MacDring.xcodeproj in Xcode and run.
The notes tab is the web editor in EditorWeb/, loaded by a WKWebView from the
app bundle. Xcode copies the reviewed bundle (EditorWeb/dist/editor.html,
editor.js, editor.css) into the app with a "Copy EditorWeb assets" build
phase, so a normal build needs no extra steps and the repository holds one copy of
those files.
The bundle also carries a raw-Markdown source mode, but nothing in the app reaches
it yet: switching modes is a host message (command: toggleMode) that only the
standalone harness sends. EditorWeb/README.md describes both modes because it
documents the bundle, not what the app currently exposes.
After changing anything under EditorWeb/src/, rebuild the bundle and commit the
result along with the source change:
cd EditorWeb && npm ci && npm run build && npm testEditorWeb has its own CI job that reruns those tests, a headless-browser smoke
test of the editor and its bridge, and a check that the committed bundle matches
the sources. See EditorWeb/README.md for the bridge protocol and
docs/markdown-editor-improvement-plan.md for why the editor is built this way.
A Linux port is in progress under linux/: a D-Bus daemon
(topdrawerd) that serves the same launcher document, volumes, Trash, recents,
launching and running-app state, and a GTK4 + layer-shell frontend
(topdrawer-shell) that today draws a first dock strip on compositors implementing
wlr-layer-shell (KDE Plasma 6, sway, hyprland, COSMIC); on GNOME the daemon runs but
the frontend exits by design (a Shell extension is planned). Releases attach a
TopDrawer-<version>-amd64.deb for Ubuntu 24.04 and newer:
sudo apt install ./TopDrawer-<version>-amd64.deb
systemctl --user enable --now topdrawerdSee linux/README.md for what's implemented, the D-Bus interface,
and how the package is built, and docs/linux-port/ for
the research and plan behind it.
- Launch Top Drawer — it appears as a sidebar icon in the menu bar, and a starter Apps tab appears on the right edge of your main display.
- Click the tab to open its drawer; click an item to launch it.
- Drag files or apps from Finder onto a tab to add them.
- Right-click a tab → Configure Tab… to rename it, change its color/glyph, move it to another edge or display, set behavior, or assign a hotkey. Right-click an item in its drawer → Customize Icon… to give it a colored folder/tile + SF Symbol icon.
- Use the menu bar → New Items / Notes / Folder / Disks / Network / Cloud / Recents / Fresh Tab… to add more (a small dialog sets the name, color, type, and folder), or Top Drawer Settings… to manage everything. A Disks tab lists your mounted ejectable volumes; a Network tab lists your mounted network shares (click to open, eject from the menu); a Cloud tab lists your cloud drives such as iCloud Drive and Dropbox (click to open); a Recents tab lists what you've recently opened — from Top Drawer, from the whole Mac via Spotlight, or both (Settings → Tabs → Source); a Fresh tab lists files that just arrived (downloads, copies, saves). See network & cloud and recents & fresh.
- Per tab (right-click → Configure Tab…, or Settings → Tabs): name, color, glyph, edge, display, position, keep-open, drawer layout (grid / list), how it idles, and an optional hotkey. Layout is a straight per-tab choice; the list layout is a compact, scrolling Finder-style table — small icons with Date, Size, and Kind columns (the date is Date Added for Fresh, last-used for Recents, modified for folders). The drawer's Columns / Rows size it just like the grid (it scrolls past what fits); a narrower drawer shows fewer of the metadata columns. Handy for a Fresh tab ordered by when files arrived. Open-on-hover and close-when-you-click-elsewhere follow the global default unless you override them here — pick On / Off for the tab, or Use global default to follow the global setting again (the clear way to revert).
- Global (Settings → Appearance / General): tab style (modern/classic), drawer translucency (translucent / frosted / solid), icon size, corner radius, tab thickness, labels, single vs. double-click to open, the open-on-hover / close-on-click defaults (overridable per tab), animation speed, the multi-display disconnect policy, and launch at login.
Top Drawer needs no special permissions for its core features — launching uses
NSWorkspace, and optional hotkeys use Carbon (no Accessibility grant). It ships
as a menu-bar agent (LSUIElement).
Two optional features are the exception, and each asks only when you choose to use it:
- Empty Trash asks Finder to empty the Trash via Apple Events, so the first time
you use it macOS prompts once to allow Top Drawer to control Finder (the app carries
the
com.apple.security.automation.apple-eventsentitlement). Declining just leaves the Trash as-is — nothing else needs it. - Fresh tabs' direct folder check (Settings → General, off by default) makes Fresh tabs read Downloads, Desktop, and Documents themselves, in addition to the permission-free Spotlight index — for Macs where Spotlight is off or unreliable. Turning it on makes macOS ask once per folder for access; left off, Fresh tabs stay Spotlight-only and never prompt.