A native macOS file manager for AI multi-taskers. Up to four independent panes for parallel projects and agents — persistent state, native polish, no compromise.
A modern coding session is half source, half artifacts. Generated images, recorded demos, PDFs from product, screenshots from QA, exported transcripts, downloaded models, Whisper outputs, design specs. None of it lives where your code does — and the tools you have for it weren't built for this volume.
You navigate to ~/Downloads, sort by date, scroll. Quit. Reopen. Default sort, scroll reset, wrong folder. Repeat 30 times a day.
VS Code's tree is great for .tsx and .py. But click an image and it opens a tiny preview in a new tab. Click a video and… you can't. Click a PDF and you're back in Finder.
Three agents running, four projects open, dozens of artifacts. You alt-tab through Finder windows you forgot you opened. Context is lost between every switch.
Independent folders, tabs, and history per pane. Inline preview for what your IDE can't render. State that survives every quit.
Every detail tuned for parallel work. Nothing reinvented, nothing decorative.
1 / 2H / 2V / 4-pane layouts with focused-pane routing. Each pane keeps its own folder, sort, scroll, and tab history — all surviving every relaunch.
Each pane has its own tab strip. ⌘T / ⌘W / ⌘⇧T, drag to reorder, right-click Close Other / Duplicate. The last tab stays as a safety placeholder.
Quick Look for images, PDF, video, audio, and office docs. Markdown files render with full GFM via MarkdownUI — tables, code blocks, task lists. Toggled per tab.
Toggle a file-tree inside any tab — not in the sidebar. Lazy child loading keeps it fast. ⌘-click a folder to open it as a new tab in the same pane.
⌘1–4 focus a pane, ⌘⌥1–4 switch layout, ⌘F recursive search, ⌘T / ⌘W manage tabs, ⌘D bookmark. Nothing requires the mouse.
Save a named snapshot of your layout, pane tabs, and focus. Click to switch projects; the outgoing state auto-saves. Right-click Rename / Delete, drag to reorder.
No bouncy springs, no shimmer, no decorative gradients. Transitions stay under 200ms ease-out. Reduce Motion makes them zero.
The sidebar's CMUX section mirrors your cmux workspaces. Click a row to open its working directory in the focused pane; ⌘-click for a new tab. Hidden when cmux isn't installed.
SwiftUI + AppKit, system theme tokens, SF Symbols, traffic-light controls. Sparkle polls for updates every 24 h — a sidebar button appears when one is ready.
Click through the steps, or scroll. Each step is a real interaction in the app.
Yes. mq-dir is completely free and open source under the MIT license. There is no subscription, no paid tier, and no account required.
Yes. mq-dir ships as a Universal Binary that runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. It requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
Finder opens one window per location and forgets your state between launches. mq-dir gives you up to four independent panes in one window, Safari-style tabs per pane, a per-tab tree view, inline previews for images, PDF, video and Markdown — and it restores your exact layout, tabs, sort and scroll after every quit.
No. mq-dir has zero telemetry and no analytics. The only network request it makes is the Sparkle update check. The full source code is public on GitHub, so you can verify this yourself.
Download the notarized .dmg from this page and drag it to Applications, or install with Homebrew: brew install --cask h5nam/mq-dir/mq-dir. Updates arrive in-app via Sparkle.
Yes. The MIT license permits unrestricted commercial use, modification, and redistribution.
No subscription, no telemetry, no account required. Just a small native app that respects your time.
Download for Mac