About
FolderBase is a native macOS app that adds an organizational layer on top of the folders and files you already have. You can attach notes, priorities, statuses, owners, deadlines, and links to any file, and apply a template to a whole project so subfolders inherit the same structure. Work in a table or a Kanban board, and find documents by name, content, or meaning, including text extracted by OCR from scanned PDFs and images. Standard Mac gestures such as Quick Look, rename, Trash, drag and drop, and Option-copy still work as expected.
FolderBase does not import, copy, or rewrite your files, and it does not require a migration. Its metadata is stored locally in SQLite on your Mac and follows each file's identity, and FSEvents updates the view when files change in the Finder. The app is signed and notarized, and it is open source under the MIT license.
AI is optional. With it turned off, FolderBase still works as a full file-organization tool without contacting any provider. When you turn it on, you can choose Apple on-device embeddings, a local Ollama model, or OpenAI with your own key stored in the macOS Keychain. You decide which files and folders the AI can read by excluding them as sources.