Mac-native behavior

Tusk is built specifically for macOS. We made the call early to focus on one platform and use it well rather than spread thin across three. The payoff is a list of small conveniences that all add up.

The menu bar icon

When you close the main window, Tusk doesn't quit. The icon stays in the macOS menu bar at the top of your screen. Click to reopen the window. Right-click for Open and Quit. The icon doesn't change color (no flashing warnings); status notifications come through the standard macOS notification system instead.

Open at login

Toggle Open Tusk on startupin Preferences > General to have macOS launch Tusk automatically when you log in. With this on, Tusk starts in the background (no window opens), so it's ready to sync the moment you plug in a drive.

Keyboard shortcuts

The full list lives on the Keyboard shortcuts page. The high-traffic ones:

• ⌘N: new project (opens the wizard).
• ⌘,: open Preferences.
• ⌘F: focus the search field on the current page.
• ⌘W: close the window (Tusk keeps running in the background).
• ⌘Q: quit Tusk.
• ⌘R: refresh the active page's data.

Show in Finder

Every place in Tusk that references a file or folder on your Mac (file table rows, project headers, drive details) has a Show in Finder action that reveals the item in Finder. Same shortcut as Finder's right-click menu. Useful when you want to grab a file for a non-Tusk workflow.

The macOS Trash

Local file deletes go to the macOS Trash by default. This applies to single-file deletes, bulk-delete-local actions, and the local side of delete-from-everywhere. You have the standard macOS Trash recovery path until you empty the Trash.

If the Trash isn't available for some reason (rare, but possible on certain volumes), Tusk falls back to fs.unlink()and surfaces a notification so you know that file isn't recoverable from Trash.

Native dialogs

File and folder pickers use the standard macOS dialog, including all the keyboard shortcuts, sidebar shortcuts, and tag filters you're used to from Finder. Drag files from Finder onto a project page or onto the destination picker to add them.

Auto-updates via Sparkle

Tusk uses the Sparkle framework (the standard for Mac apps that ship outside the App Store) for auto-updates. By default, Tusk checks for updates on launch and once a day after that. You can disable auto-updates in Preferences > General if you prefer to update manually. Releases are signed and notarized by Apple.

Spotlight indexing

Tusk doesn't do anything special with Spotlight. The files in your project folders are visible to Spotlight like any other files on your Mac. Files that aren't local (Not local in Tusk's file table) aren't searchable from Spotlight, only from Tusk's own search.

Help > Open Logs

From the macOS menu bar at the top of your screen, choose Help → Open Logs to reveal the log folder in Finder. Useful when something looks wrong and you want to see what Tusk thinks happened. Logs are plain text. Old logs rotate out automatically.