Files view

Every cluster has a board and its files. The files are always listed in the sidebar; press F, or ⤢ on the sidebar's Files card, and they fill the screen — folders, a grid of previews or a list, with search, sorting, type filters and Info. F again brings the board back. Nothing is converted; it is one set of contents with two ways to look at it.

Updated October 27, 2026

The board is for arranging. Files is for finding.

Same cluster, same contents, different question being asked — and you can ask both at once.

Opening the full Files page

A cluster's files are always listed in the sidebar's Files card. When you want only files, press F, or ⤢ at the top right of that card, and they fill the screen. Each shelf's ⤢ in the sidebar opens the page on just that kind of file.

The page is that card grown: the cluster's name at the top, the same search and All files ⌄ menu, and the same shelves. While it's open, the card in the sidebar folds to a bar — Files · full screen — so your files are listed once.

⌘K → "Show Files" does the same as F. Opening the page this way is yours alone, on this device; it never changes the cluster for anyone else. To make a cluster open in Files for everyone, and on shared and published links, choose Always open in Files from its menu in the sidebar (if you can edit it); the same menu turns it back with Open on the board by default. Visitors on those links get this same page, read-only: the search, All files ⌄, Grid and List, Quick look, Info and downloads, but nothing that adds, moves or deletes. The title is just the cluster's name there, and its clusters open from their tiles.

In split view, F acts on the pane you last worked in, and Files there fills that pane.

A folder or zip you import puts its files in each new cluster's Files, off the board, and the empty canvas offers to put them on.

Dragging files

Files dragged from this page onto a folder move into that cluster, as they do from the sidebar. Hold ⌥ (Ctrl on Windows) as you let go to copy them instead: a copy is a new card showing the same stored file, so nothing is uploaded again and it takes no extra storage, but it counts toward your plan's card limit. The rules, and what a move takes with it, are on the sidebar page under Moving and copying files.

Not on board

A file can be in a cluster without being on its board. Files you add in Files start that way, and so does a card you take off: right-click it on the board and choose Remove from board. Either way it waits in Files with a Not on board mark. Not on board in the View menu shows just those.

To put one on the board, drag it there from the sidebar, or right-click it in Files — or use the selection bar, or Quick look — and choose Put on board, which places it in the clear space nearest the middle of where the board was last looking. A link or search result that points at a file that isn't on the board opens Files with it picked out instead.

Files waiting off the board are still cards: they count toward your plan's card limit, and anyone the cluster is shared with sees them in Files.

Folders and the path bar

A cluster's nested clusters are its folders. They come first — in the grid as tiles along the top, with the cluster's colour dot (or its cover), its name and how many items are inside, and in the list as the table's first rows — with the files after them.

Double-click a folder to open it. You go there and stay in Files, and the cluster above it sits over the title as ‹ its name — click it to go up. The full path is in the breadcrumb at the top of the screen.

Springing into folders while you drag

As in Finder, you can move something into a folder you can't see yet. Drag a file (or a folder), hold it over a folder for a moment and Files opens that folder with the drag still in your hand; hold it over Back or a step of the path to go back up. Let go on the folder's files, or on a folder inside it, to move what you're dragging there. The folder blinks just before it opens.

You land in that cluster once the move is saved. Let go anywhere else, or press Esc, and Files goes back to where the drag started.

Grid and list

Grid — the sidebar card's shelves, grown. Photos and Video are a gallery laid out in rows that fill the width: pictures keep their own shape — a portrait stays tall, a panorama stays wide — instead of being cropped to a box, and the picture is the name; hover one to read it. Audio and Files follow as rows, and Notes, Links and Other start folded — click one's name to open it. The default, because most of what you are looking for you would recognise by sight. Size in the All files ⌄ menu — Small, Medium or Large — sets how big the pictures are, remembered on your device.

List — a classic list: one table of everything, clusters first, with Kind, Size and the date, every other row faintly shaded. Dense, scannable, sortable — click a column's heading. A cluster that is mostly audio opens in the list, for the columns below.

Grid and List sit beside the search (on a phone or tablet, in the All files ⌄ menu). Your choice is remembered per cluster on the device you made it on.

When a cluster is mostly audio

The list swaps its columns. Kind and Size give way to Time, BPM, Key and Format, and each one sorts — so a folder of samples becomes something you can order by tempo or by key.

It switches on its own once half of what you are looking at is audio, which is also true the moment you filter to Audio. Nothing to turn on, and a cluster of notes and images never grows four empty columns.

Key sorts by the circle of fifths, not the alphabet. Sorting a pack by key is really asking what stacks with what, so C, G, D, A and E land next to each other rather than A, B, C.

Tempo and key come from the filename as the file uploads, and are editable on the card — see video and audio.

Beside the search — under it on a phone or tablet — you get the pack in one line: how many audio files, the tempo range they span, and how much material there is in total. It follows the search and the filters, so narrowing to 128 re-reads the selection you are actually looking at.

On a narrow window, in a split pane, or with Info open, the columns that matter least give way first, until on a phone only the name is left. The name is the last thing to give up room.

Sorting and filtering

Both live in the All files ⌄ menu beside the search field — the same menu, in the same words, as the sidebar's Files card.

Files opens newest first, by date added. The menu also sorts by Name, Size or Canvas order: the canvas read like a page, top row first and each row left to right, so what you see is the board you just left, lined up. In the list, click a column's heading to sort by it — name, kind, size or date, plus time, tempo, key and format when the cluster is mostly audio — and the menu shows that sort as the one in force.

Show narrows to one shelf — Photos, Video, Audio, Files, Notes or Links, whichever the cluster has — or to files that are Not on board, and the menu takes its name: Photos ⌄.

Search filters as you type, against names and content.

The combination is the answer to "where is that PDF someone dropped in here last week" — show the Files shelf, newest first, done. On the canvas that is a hunting expedition.

Selecting and moving

Click a file to select it, ⌘-click to add to the selection, ⇧-click for a range, ⌘A for everything showing. In the grid, the round check that appears in a tile's corner on hover adds it without a modifier key. Click empty space or press Esc to clear it. The arrow keys move a highlight through the files, Enter selects it and ⇧Space adds it to the selection. Tab reaches each folder (Enter opens it) and then the files, which take one Tab stop between them: the arrows move inside it.

Select something and the search line gives way to a bar:

Dragging files onto one of the folders above them moves them into that cluster too — and holding them over a folder opens it, so you can drop them deeper (see Springing into folders).

With a finger

On a touch screen a tap opens what it lands on, as the iPad's Files app does: a folder opens and a file opens in Quick look. Touch and hold a file or a folder for its menu, the same one a right-click opens, with Select first. Select puts a check on every file, and each tap then adds one or takes it out; a hold adds the one it is on and opens the menu for them all. The bar gains Copy to…, since there is no right-click to find it, and ends with Done. A hold opens the menu rather than picking a file up, so a finger moves files with Move to… or Put on board, not by dragging. A trackpad or mouse on a tablet still clicks and selects as it does on a computer.

Right-click a file, a folder or a selection for everything you can do with it — Quick look, Show on board, Rename, Download, Copy link, Move to…, Copy to…, Get info and Delete — or press ⇧F10 to open the same menu from the keyboard.

Rename a file or folder with F2, or Rename in that menu: the name becomes editable in place, Enter saves and Esc puts it back. Renaming a file changes what it's called in the cluster, not the file — it still downloads under the name it was uploaded with. Notes are named by their text, so they don't rename. ⌘Z and ⌘⇧Z undo and redo in Files just as they do on the board.

Auditioning audio

An audio row's thumbnail is a play button. Press it and the clip plays in place. The waveform beside it is drawn from the file itself, and it fills as the clip plays. While it is playing, click anywhere along that waveform to jump there — the fastest way to the part of a long sample you actually want. A line fills along the bottom of the row as well, for when the waveform has no room.

In the grid, audio has a shelf of its own, as rows with the same play button and waveform.

For going through a lot of them, use the keyboard: ↑ and ↓ move a highlight down the rows (the arrows walk the tiles in the grid), Space plays whatever is highlighted, Enter selects it. When a clip finishes, the next audio row starts on its own and the highlight follows — so a pack of loops plays through while you keep your hands still. It stops at the end rather than wrapping.

Only one thing plays at a time, everywhere: starting a row stops a clip playing on the canvas, and vice versa. Sorting by tempo or key and then holding ↓ is the fastest way through a folder of samples.

Downloading

Hover any row holding a file — an image, PDF, video, audio clip or attachment — and a download button appears at the end of it. Files come down under their original names, so renaming a card for readability never costs you the extension. Images and videos uploaded before they started keeping names come down under the card's title, or a generic name if it has none. A name a browser invents for a pasted image — image.png — is not kept.

Download all sits at the top right of the page, beside Shrink, whenever there is more than one file to take (on a phone or tablet, select them and use Download on the bar). It follows the search and the filters, so it reads Download 14 once you have narrowed to fourteen. Select particular rows instead and the selection bar offers Download for just those.

Either way you get a single zip named after the cluster. Zips are capped at 500 files or 500 MB, whichever comes first; past either, take it in batches.

Anything in the selection with no file behind it — a note, a link — is skipped, and the count of what was skipped is reported rather than quietly dropped. The same is true of a file storage cannot hand back: the archive still contains everything that could be read, and says how many could not.

Previews

Everything gets a real preview, not a generic icon. Images and video show themselves, and a document (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the rest) its first page; grids, docs, shapes, notes and links get schematic marks that indicate their shape and content.

Quick look

Double-click a file, or highlight it and press Space, to see it big without leaving Files. Pictures open fitted — click to see them at full size and drag to look around — video and audio play, PDFs page through with ↑ / ↓, and so do documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Keynote and the rest), a zip opens as a folder to walk through, and everything else shows its preview large. ← / → step to the previous and next file, in the order Files is showing them. Space or Esc closes it; in a zip, Esc first steps back from a picture you opened.

A bar floats along the top: the file's name and where it is among the files (Image · 3 of 30), then Show on board (or Show in cluster, for a file you're browsing in another cluster), Download and Info.

Under a picture, More like this shows the pictures in your workspace that look most like it, matched by what is in them rather than by name. Click one to open it in place; ← / → carry on through the files. The strip appears only when something is close, and not in a workspace whose AI suggestions are off.

On an audio row in the List layout, Space still auditions it in place, so a pack plays through with ↓ and Space.

Info

Info — ⌘I, Get info in the right-click menu, or the button in Quick look and on the selection bar — describes whatever is selected: a file's large preview, its kind and format, size, dimensions, who uploaded it and exactly when, and where it lives; a folder's contents; a summary of several things; and, with nothing selected, the cluster you're in. The same Info opens from the board. On the Files page it opens as a card beside the files (on a phone or tablet, as a sheet from the bottom), and whether it's open is remembered on your device. From there:

Show on board is the important one: it connects the two views, so finding something in Files puts you in front of it in context. It and Copy link are app actions, so they are not offered to a signed-out visitor on a shared link — there is no canvas for them to open, and the deep link would not resolve.

For an audio clip the panel also reports its length, tempo, key and format, which is most of the reason to open it at all.

A file with more than one version lists them under Versions, where you can make an older one current again, download it, label it, or delete it — see Versions. Its right-click menu here offers Upload new version… too.

Adding files here

Drag files into Files, or use Add files beside the search — on a phone or tablet, the + in the bottom bar. They join the cluster without going on its board: they wait in Files, marked Not on board, until you drag them onto the board or choose Put on board. The same goes for Upload in the sidebar — dropping on the canvas is how you put files straight on the board. An empty cluster offers Add files, New cluster and Link a cluster right where its contents would be.

Drop a single file onto a file of the same kind instead, and it becomes that file's next version — the file lights up and says so first. Hold ⌥ to add it as a separate file.

Presence

Files shows who else is in the cluster, and what they have selected — the same presence information the canvas shows, so switching views does not mean losing sight of your collaborators.

Every cluster is a drive

This is the framing worth internalising. A cluster is not "a canvas that also has a list" — it is a set of contents that can be arranged spatially or browsed like a folder. Teams that come from a shared-drive workflow can use Clusters that way from day one and discover the canvas later.

That discovery is nudged exactly once, the first time a cluster gets full enough for it to matter.

Can I use Clusters like Google Drive?

For the files a project is working from, largely yes — and the difference is that the same files are also a canvas your team arranges and argues over. For what a drive is really for, no. Here is the line:

So use a cluster the way a team uses a project folder: the references, files and documents a production is working from, organised where everyone on it can see them. Keep Google Drive, Dropbox or your own server for what a drive does best — backup, sync to your computer and offline copies.

Coming from a reference tool that only does one of these? See how Clusters compares.

Machine-readable: /docs/clusters/list-view.md · /llms.txt
What changed and when: /changelog