Using Shade as a File Explorer

How to use Shade as a File Explorer

Shade was designed from the ground up to replace your finder. Here’s how you can use it exactly like your file explorer, and more.

Navigate Your Files, Just Like Finder

Shade is a file explorer, so you can use it to navigate your files just like you would in finder. Simply go to the folders that you care about and drag and drop into the applications you need. Shade offers better previews, more keybindings, and faster ways to get to where you want. Check out this video below about using ⌘⇧G or Ctrl + Shift + G to quickly navigate your directory

As you can see from the video, you can easily navigate your directories, and get better previews for your assets compared to your native file explorer.

If you want the best previews, make sure that you AI index the folders that you care about. That way Shade can fully understand what is within each of your folders and give you the best previews and search.

Indexing Your Folders Directly From Shade

If you recall previously, we showcased how to index Shade using the Add New button. In this article, we’ll show you how to do it directly from the finder view by right clicking on a folder. Just like finder, we give you multiple different actions that you can take on a folder. You can rename it, copy it, favorite it, and of course, index it with Shade.

Indexing a folder with Shade will go through the folder and all of its constituents and index them using AI. This will make it possible for you to search for the contents of the folder, and get better previews for the files within the folder.

Here, I’m showing a video where Shade is indexing one of my external hard drives (did I tell you that it works with externals too!). Shade automatically keeps track of all the assets that I’ve indexed, regardless of where they are located. Meaning that if I have SD cards that I want indexed, or a 14 TB backup drive that I want to search, as long as I index it with Shade, Shade will know each and every asset and its location, even if its not plugged into the computer.

It’s super straightforward to index your externals, simply plug them into your computer, and hit index with Shade. Then you’ll always know where all of your assets are no matter where you go.