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What Shelf remembers

One memory. Many forms.

A screenshot, a link, a document, a fragment of a thought. They arrive as different file types and end up as the same thing: something you decided to keep.

Shelf doesn't sort them into folders. It reads them on your Mac and holds on to the clues you'll actually remember later.

Free. macOS 14 and later, Apple Silicon and Intel. No account.

  1. 01

    You keep it

    A screenshot, a link, a PDF, a line of thought.

  2. 02

    Shelf reads it

    On your Mac: the text, the look, the meaning.

  3. 03

    It keeps its context

    The week, the source, what came with it.

  4. 04

    You describe it later

    In whatever words you happen to have.

  5. 05

    It comes back

    With the reason it matched.

The file type was never the interesting part.

A screenshot of an error and a note about the same bug are the same memory in two formats. Software that organises by extension splits them apart; Shelf keeps them near each other, because that's how you'll look for them.

Which is why there's no import step, no folder structure and no tagging ritual here. Keep the thing. Describe it later.

Next thought

Storage has been solved for decades. Remembering hasn't been solved at all.

A memory problem, not a storage problem

Shelf V3 is out now

Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.

This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.

Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.

Download the latest version →Version 3.0 · macOS 14+