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Built by Bangkok-based director Sergiy Pudich, DriveShelf is a Mac app that catalogs every external drive you connect, so its contents stay searchable after the drive goes back on the shelf, and it now comes with a free iPhone companion app that carries the same catalog. Let’s take a look at what it offers.
Anyone who shoots or edits for a living tends to build up a shelf of SSDs and hard drives over the years, and Finder can only search the ones that are plugged in. We previously covered Offline Files for macOS, which solves the same basic problem and has since expanded into a broader archive-search tool. DriveShelf takes a simpler approach focused on physical drives, while adding cross-drive duplicate finding and an iPhone companion for checking the catalog away from the Mac.
Sergiy has worked full-time in the film industry since 2012, and DriveShelf started as a way to manage his own archive. It was the first app he built and is now part of a broader set of tools under the EasyFilm name. DriveShelf catalogs the file names, folder paths, sizes, and creation and modification dates of each drive you add, storing that information locally on the Mac. From there, a single search can run across every cataloged drive, connected or not, and show which physical drive contains the file. The app can also identify duplicate files across drives.
When a new drive is connected, DriveShelf offers to add it. According to Pudich, the scan only reads metadata and never copies, moves or changes the files on the drive. The DriveShelf website adds that the app only asks for read access to the specific drives you choose to add. Once a drive is in the catalog, it can be browsed folder by folder in a Finder-style view, even while it is sitting in a drawer.
Search covers all cataloged drives at once and can be filtered by file type, size and drive. Renaming a drive in Finder doesn’t break its link to the catalog, and the whole catalog can be saved via File → Export Catalog and restored with Import Catalog, which is useful when moving to a new Mac.
For drive housekeeping, the sidebar shows the free space on each drive, and the built-in speed test measures how fast a drive reads. Drives can be grouped by client, project or year, which mirrors how many production companies already label their physical media.
The duplicate finder lists files that share the same name and size on more than one drive. A minimum file size can be set so small files such as sidecar or cache files are skipped. DriveShelf doesn’t delete anything from this view. It shows where each copy lives and can open a copy’s folder in its own window, so two folders can be compared side by side before deciding what to keep.
Matching is based on name and size, as described by the company, rather than on file checksums. For archive planning, that makes it useful for spotting potential duplicate files across drives before deciding what can be removed or consolidated.
The free iPhone app carries the same catalog, synced through the user’s own iCloud account rather than through the developer’s servers. It lets you check which drive holds a file without going back to the Mac, for instance when a client calls while you are away from the office. According to the DriveShelf website, the iPhone app is read-only and cannot catalog drives itself; cataloging still happens on the Mac. It requires iOS 26.5 or later, and the App Store listing notes support for Family Sharing.
DriveShelf is not a backup tool. It doesn’t copy files and cannot recover a drive that has failed, so it works alongside offload and backup software rather than replacing it. It is designed for physical media such as external SSDs and hard drives, and network drives (NAS) aren’t officially supported yet.
DriveShelf is available now on the Mac App Store for $14.99 / €17.99 as a one-time purchase with no subscription and no limit on the number of drives. The Mac app requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. The iPhone companion app is included in the same purchase and requires iOS 26.5 or later. For more information, please visit the DriveShelf website.
How do you keep track of footage across your drive shelf today: spreadsheets, a cataloging app, or plugging drives in one by one? Let us know in the comments.
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A camera was put in my hands at 16, and I’ve been taking photographs ever since. Before moving to Vienna, I worked as a photographer on film sets, telling stories as they unfolded behind the scenes. Since then, I’ve focused on immersive theater, both as a photographer and an actor. I am the photographer for the award-winning Nesterval ensemble, documenting the energy and atmosphere of their performances. I’m a teller of stories. Stories hold my interest. I’ll take on any project with a story to tell.