The first version of Droppy's shelf decided for you. Files on one side, music on the other, and that was the layout. It was a reasonable default and a bad rule, because nobody's top of the screen needs the same things. A designer wants the clipboard and colours. A developer wants system stats and the terminal. Someone on calls all day wants a timer and the camera.
Custom Shelf hands the layout to you. It is an editor you open on the shelf itself, with the widgets you can add in a tray underneath, and it works the way rearranging icons on an iPhone does: things wiggle, you drag them, you press done.
How the editor works
Right-click beside the media card rather than on it, because the media card has its own small menu. The shelf's menu has Customise Shelf at the top, next to Open Clipboard, Open Settings and Quit Droppy.
In edit mode every widget on the shelf gets a dashed outline and a remove badge, and the tray of available widgets appears below. Pick one up and an insertion gap opens where it would land, so you can see the result before letting go. Drop it and the shelf widens to fit, and the tray marks that widget as placed. Dragging a widget that is already on the shelf moves it; dragging its edge resizes it, up to twice its usual width, without pushing the widgets around it out of shape.
Nothing is committed until you press the check mark. The cross puts everything back the way it was, which makes it cheap to try a layout and change your mind.
The file tray and the media player need no droplet. They are the two widgets most layouts start from.
Notes and Obsidian for writing, Calendar for tasks and events, Pomodoro and High Alert for focus, Termi-Notch for a terminal, and Agents for coding sessions.
Weather, System Stats with your two chosen graphs, the clipboard's latest items, notifications, and Audio Control's per-app sliders.
Camera for a quick mirror, Voice Transcribe, OCR, Mechey's sound packs and Thaw's menu bar commands.
A droplet's widget shows up in the tray once that droplet is switched on.
Layouts that work
Listening. Media and the file tray, the classic pair, with the media widget wide enough for its full controls.
Writing. Notes wide, with Pomodoro beside it. Widgets that are mostly a text field, Notes, Obsidian and Termi-Notch, take the cursor when you open them on their own, so you can type the moment the shelf appears. Widgets that are not text fields never steal focus.
Building. System Stats with CPU and memory graphs, Termi-Notch and Agents, so a build, a terminal and your coding agents are one hover away.
Designing. The clipboard strip for recent images and colours, the file tray for assets, and media for the playlist that gets you through the afternoon.
Pages, and getting around them
The shelf has three pages: Home, Tray and Widgets. Their buttons sit below the shelf and can be hidden, and when they are, a two-finger swipe moves between pages. The tray button can also appear only while files are waiting in it. The Quick Actions row, the tiles you drop files on to send them to AirDrop, a cloud link, Mail or the converter, is set up separately under Settings, General, Quick Actions, with two to four tiles of your choice.
On a Mac without a notch
Everything here works the same way on an external display or a Mac without a notch, where Droppy draws a Dynamic Island instead. The shelf opens from the island and the editor works the same way.