Dropzone 4
A fast, efficient tool for moving files and launching apps
You can drag a file or app to the ‘dropzone’ to activate it
Free (IAPs) FROM Aptonic, aptonic.com NEEDS OS X 10.10 or later
One of the most popular categories on the Mac App Store is ‘launcher’ programs that provide new ways of quickly launching apps, or moving files and folders around. Dropzone from Aptonic has always been a popular choice here, and was recently updated to version 4.0. This new version provides a basic set of features for free, or you can pay a subscription of £1.99 per month to unlock the Pro version that has a number of additional features. Oddly, version 3 is still available too, with a fixed price of £9.99 (note that there’s also an app called DropZone 2 as well – with a capital ‘Z’ – but that’s from a completely different developer).
When you install Dropzone 4, it adds an icon to the menu bar on the top right of your screen. Clicking on this opens a menu for using Dropzone, or you can simply drag a file or app up towards the menu bar to display a much larger icon that acts as a ‘dropzone’ that activates the app more quickly.
The Dropzone menu is divided into three rows, starting with the Drop Bar at the top. Placing a file in here creates a kind of alias so that you can quickly open the file or move it to another location when you need to. The next row is the Grid, and this allows you to store both apps and folders, so that you can quickly launch apps, or move or copy files from one folder to another. The third row contains more complex ‘actions’ – such as using AirDrop to transfer files to another Mac, or using the Tiny URL service to quickly create short versions of web links.
Subscription option
We’re pleased to see that all these features are free, and you only need to pay the subscription fee if you want to use more advanced features such as keyboard shortcuts for launching apps and actions. The subscription also gives you free upgrades in the future, as well as access to a larger library of actions for tasks such as uploading files to Google Drive, downloading videos from YouTube, or using text-to-speech.
That’s a bit of a bargain, as many people will find the free version of Dropzone really useful all by itself. And if the Pro version includes a particular feature that you need then the modest subscription fee will soon pay for itself by saving you time every day. CLIFF JOSEPH