Using the Desktop App

You can manage your Files.com documents from the Finder (Mac) / File Explorer (Windows), just as you would any other file or folder that is already on your local machine. Create, open, edit, delete, or move files and folders. You can even drag and drop them from your mounted volume to another folder on your local machine, and vice versa.

You can only access the mounted volume or files when a connection is possible to the server. You can not access the mounted volume or files if you are offline.

Whenever you make a change to files and folders on your mounted volume, the Files.com desktop app will push those updates to Files.com, keeping your local volume in sync with the remote server. Note that to create or modify a file within a folder, the user must have write permissions on that folder.

If your use case involves syncing files to a local machine, we recommend using the Files.com Command Line Interface (CLI) App for this. Note that Files.com also supports an On-Premise Agent application, which can be used to conveniently and securely connect on-premise file systems with Files.com.

By clicking the the Files.com pinwheel icon (in your Mac menu bar or Windows system tray), you will see options to Connect to your Files.com account or delete the account.

For each account you'd like to connect, perform the following steps:

Click the Files.com pinwheel icon (in your Mac menu bar or Windows system tray) and select the Connect An Account menu option. In the newly opened web browser window, enter the login details for the Files.com user account with which you would like to connect (just as you would when logging into the web app). After you've logged in, you'll see a success message in the browser, followed shortly thereafter by a desktop notification informing you that the volume is mounted. Close the browser window that was triggered by the desktop app and begin using the desktop app.

Once you've signed in, an account will immediately connect, and will automatically connect again every time the app is restarted.

A successfully connected account will be designated by a green icon, and a failed connection will show a yellow indicator.

You can use an account's context menu to manually disconnect that account, after which it will no longer attempt to connect until you've manually connected using this same context menu.

A disconnected account will remain an authenticated bookmark that's ready to reconnect on command.

You can also delete an account from that account's context menu. This will completely remove the bookmarked account along with its credentials (that is, the account's associated desktop app API key). Of course, you can always sign in to that account again and reconnect at anytime.

You can select Show in Finder (Mac) / Show (Windows) from an account's context menu to quickly view that mounted volume in the Finder (Mac) / File Explorer (Windows).

On Windows devices, you can change the drive letter that will be used by each connection on the Files.com app. Because this setting is specific to each connection (and you can have more than one connected account), you change this by going to the Edit Account option while hovering over your Files.com account via the context menu from the Windows system tray icon.

If an account has expired credentials, you will be required to sign in to that account (through the desktop app) again before reconnecting. Credentials may expire for a number of reasons, including the Desktop session was manually revoked by you or a site administrator via the web app, or the Desktop session lifetime that's set for your Files.com site has lapsed (defaults to 30 days, unless modified by a site admin), or it can be your Files.com site has Desktop Session IP Pinning enabled, requiring you to sign in again if your IP address changes while already signed in to the desktop app.

Administrators can change the above settings in the settings for each user account.

Every file and folder in your mounted volume will have a status icon, indicating its status.

There are two different statuses, each with their own icon, described in the table below:

ICON	DESCRIPTION
	Online Only. The file can only be opened when a connection to your Files.com site is active. The file does not take any disk space on your computer. The file is downloaded on demand when you open it.
	Ignored. The file or folder is only saved in a local temporary location and will not upload to your Files.com site. System files such as desktop.ini, Thumbs.db, .DS_Store etc. will be ignored from upload. Files with certain extensions like .tmp, .nfs, .idlk, .part, and .crdownload will also be ignored. Default folder names such as "New Folder" (on Windows) and "untitled folder" (on Mac) will also be ignored from uploading. To avoid upload issues with default folder names, it is recommended to always rename these folders to a name of your choice.

Every file and folder in your mounted volume will have a Files.com context menu, with desktop-app-specific actions that you can take. There are a few ways to access this context menu like right click or control-click on the file or folder that you'd like to take action on, or right click or control-click on empty space that's inside the current directory view in the Finder (Mac) / File Explorer (Windows), or on Mac, use the Finder's toolbar to take action on the current directory view.

The context menu includes a number of different actions, as described below:

If you're on a Mac, you can select Reload to manually pull down any unsynced changes that might have occurred on your Files.com site since the desktop app last synced.

On Windows, with the target directory focused in the File Explorer, you can press F5 on your keyboard to pull down updates.

Select this to conveniently copy the URL of the folder or file, which you could then paste into a browser to access that item from the web app (assuming you're logged in).

You can also hover over Copy URL to view the URL.

Select this to conveniently open the URL of the folder or file in your default web browser (assuming you're logged in).

You can also hover over Open URL to view the URL.

There are 5 categories of preferences you can set for the Desktop App.

Click on the Files.com icon in the menu bar (Mac) / system tray (Windows), and select Preferences.

Limit the amount of bandwidth that can be used for downloading and uploading files. This setting may be useful if you find that other apps are suffering from reduced performance while transferring large files.

Depending on which notifications you want, you can enable or disable notifications for certain events. If the notification setting is enabled for any event such as Upload complete, you will see a notification on your screen when files are uploaded etc. Note that, the notifications should also be enabled at your corresponding Operating System settings or notifications preferences.

From the dropdown, you can choose which build you'd like to update to. In general, we recommend that users stick to the default, Release build, for a more reliable experience. Although if there's a specific feature or bug fix that you're waiting for, it can be useful to temporarily update to an experimental build (with the knowledge that this build may or may not be stable).

After the correct build is selected, you can use the Check for Update Now button to manually check for the newest version available and download the latest version of that build.

With the Automatically check for updates option enabled, you'll automatically receive an alert when a new version is available for download.

Use the dropdown to change the language that's used by the desktop app interface. By default, the Files.com Desktop App will use the computer system's language preference.

This setting refers to how your Files.com desktop app is launched after you login to your Operating System. Enabling this setting will launch the desktop app automatically when you login to your PC or Mac. We recommend keeping this setting ON always.

Here, you can access links to our documentation or support articles. Additionally, you have the option to enable or disable debug logs in case you encounter any issues with the desktop app and wish to troubleshoot or submit the logs to our support team for analysis.

The Desktop App is a powerful part of the Files.com platform, but it should not be used as part of your business automations. Instead, we recommend using our Command Line Interface (CLI) App, On-Premise Agent or our SDKs.