Right-click any file or folder in Explorer, Finder or your Linux file manager. Then press one shortcut from anywhere, type a few letters, and it opens.
No account. Nothing uploaded. Your files stay where they are.
That's the real launcher, running on sample data. Click it and type.
Pin to PinFiles appears in the right-click menu of
Windows Explorer, macOS Finder, GNOME Files, KDE Dolphin, Cinnamon Nemo, Xfce Thunar, and the pinfiles command.
You know exactly which file you want. You still click through six folders to get to it. Again.
Pin the handful of files and folders you keep coming back to. Get to any of them without thinking about where they live.
In the file manager you already use. Or drag it onto the launcher, or type pinfiles pin.
From any app, any window. Change it in Settings if that one's taken.
It opens in its own app. Ctrl/⌘+Enter shows it in its folder instead.
A shortcut that breaks the first time you tidy up is worse than no shortcut. PinFiles is built around what actually happens to files.
A pin remembers the file itself, not just its path. When you open a pin whose file has moved, PinFiles looks nearby, finds it, and quietly fixes the pin.
Looks in the old folder and its parent, three levels deep, and stops after 20,000 entries. It never scans your disk.
Pin things on an external disk or a network share. When it isn't connected, PinFiles says so and keeps the pin for when it's back.
Search is fuzzy and forgiving: case and accents don't matter, and what you open often rises to the top. Everything else is one key.
pinfiles://search?q=report for your notes and scriptscd "$(pinfiles open app --print)"network calls in the free app
pins searched in under 5 ms, enforced by a test
file managers with a right-click entry
operating systems, one app
Each system allows something different without a paid developer certificate. Here's what you get on each, with no surprises.
Windows 10 and 11
Apple silicon Macs
Needs WebKitGTK 4.1 (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12 and newer)
pinfiles show in your keyboard settings.Everything that runs on your computer is free, with no pin limit. Paid plans will only ever be for things that cost money to run.
Shared collections for a whole team.
Available now
Everything local. Unlimited pins.
pinfiles commandYour pins on every computer you use.
In the free version, nothing leaves your computer at all.
The app makes no network calls: no account, no analytics, no update checks. If any of that is ever added, it will be opt-in and listed here first.
Pins live in a single SQLite file in your user data folder. pinfiles path shows where.
A pin stores a name, a location and enough to recognise the file again. Never what's inside it.
A pinfiles:// link can search and open pins. It can't add, remove or rename them.
Export every pin as JSON from Settings or pinfiles export. Unpinning never touches the file.
No. A pin is a note of where something is. Your files stay exactly where you put them, and unpinning never touches the file itself.
No. It only knows what you pinned. The one time it looks around is when a pinned file has gone missing: it checks the old folder and its parent, three levels deep, and gives up after 20,000 entries.
Nothing breaks. A pin remembers the file's identity on disk, so the next time you open it PinFiles finds it under its new name and updates the pin. If it has moved somewhere far away, the pin is marked missing and kept, so you can decide what to do.
PinFiles tells you which drive it's on and asks you to connect it. The pin stays put and works again the moment the drive is back.
Yes. Everything that runs on your computer is free with no pin limit, and it will stay that way. A paid plan for syncing pins between computers may come later. It doesn't exist yet, so there is nothing to buy.
Nothing. This version makes no network calls at all: no telemetry, no crash reports, no update checks. You'll find new versions on this page.
These are preview builds and they aren't signed with a paid Apple or Microsoft certificate yet, so Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper ask you to confirm. The download section below says exactly what to click. Each file's SHA-256 is listed so you can check it's the file that was built.
Preview builds for Windows, macOS and Linux.
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First open: Windows may say it protected your PC. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
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First open: drag PinFiles to Applications and open it. If macOS says it can't verify the developer, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway.
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Debian, Ubuntu: sudo apt install ./PinFiles_*.deb
Anything else: chmod +x PinFiles_*.AppImage, then run it. AppImages need FUSE 2 (libfuse2).
Then open PinFiles once: it walks you through the shortcut and the right-click menu. Intel Macs aren't supported by these builds yet.
Install, pick your shortcut, right-click something you use every day. That's it.
Download