The Shelf: a stopover for files in transit
Mid-drag, and the destination window isn’t open? Park it on the Shelf. It lives in your menu bar and floats above every window; Finder and the canvas can both drag in and out — and the original files don’t move until you send them on.
Scenario
Every day has a few file-ferrying runs: three contracts picked out of Downloads and delivered to a project folder; two cards moved from this space to another; a batch of screenshots collected for a colleague. Start and destination are rarely in the same window, on the same screen — or even on the same desktop.
The pain
Dragging is the most natural gesture on macOS, but it demands that origin and destination face each other at the same time. The target window isn’t open, you have to switch desktops mid-flight, or halfway through you realize the folder doesn’t exist yet — let go and the trip is wasted, so you shuttle back and forth instead.
How Alayo does it
Once you turn the Shelf on in Settings:
- It lives in your menu bar; the panel docks at the screen edge, floats above every window, and remembers wherever you park it;
- Drag in from Finder or the canvas: items line up in a queue, held as references, not copies — the originals in Finder don’t move (canvas cards are taken off the canvas, undoably);
- While you’re dragging files, an empty Shelf appears on its own on the screen your pointer is on, so you never have to go find it (can be turned off in Settings);
- Deliver: drag an item to its destination in Finder — same volume = move, ⌥ = copy, across volumes = copy. Finder itself performs the move, the exact gesture you already use; drop onto any space’s canvas and it lands as a card. Moves and canvas drops dequeue the item; copies stay on the Shelf;
- Items that came from a space also offer Put Back — one right-click returns them where they came from (offered while the source space still exists).
Follow along
- Open Settings… → General and in the Shelf section turn on Enable Shelf — the Alayo icon appears in your menu bar (want it ready at boot? Also check Launch at Login);
- Click the menu bar icon and choose Show Shelf: the empty panel unfolds at the right edge, reading “Drop files here to stash”;
- Drag two files in from Finder: they line up in the queue — check Finder, the originals haven’t moved;
- Drag a card in from the canvas: it’s taken off the canvas into the queue (⌘Z undoes it);
- Drag an item to a destination folder in Finder: a plain drag on the same volume = move and the item leaves the queue once delivered; hold ⌥ = copy and it stays on the Shelf;
- Right-click the item that came from a space and choose Put Back in “<space name>”: it returns to that space’s canvas.
Related reading
- New to Alayo → Getting Started
- Why originals stay put and every step is undoable → Core Concepts