The Shelf

What opens when you hover or drag. It holds the files you are moving, and it is also the frame every Droplet widget lives in.

The file tray

Drag any file, folder, image or selection to the top of the screen. The shelf opens to take it and holds it until you drag it out somewhere else, drop it on a Quick Action, or clear it. Items can be pinned so they survive automatic clean-up.

Auto-removeTakes files off the Shelf and Basket once you drag them out, so the tray empties as you use it.
Protect originalsAlways copies instead of moving. Without it, dragging to the same disk moves the file and the original leaves its folder; dragging to another disk always copies.
File retentionRemoves unpinned shelf files after a time you choose.
Open tray after dropSwitches to the Files tab after a successful drop, so what you just added is visible.

Pages and navigation

The shelf has three pages: Home, Tray and Widgets. Their buttons sit below the shelf and can be hidden, in which case you move between pages with a two-finger swipe instead. The tray button can also be set to appear only while files are actually waiting.

Custom Shelf widgets

Any Droplet with a shelf surface can be placed on the shelf, alone or beside another one. Widgets available today cover files, weather, media, notifications, High Alert, Termi-Notch, Pomodoro, camera, Voice Transcribe, Calendar, Notes, Obsidian, Thaw, Agents, Mechey, clipboard, System Stats, OCR and Audio Control.

Widgets that are mostly a text field, meaning Notes, Obsidian and Termi-Notch, take keyboard focus when you open them on their own, so the cursor is already in the field. Widgets that are not text fields never steal focus.

Timing and behaviour

Animation speedMakes the shelf and island open and close faster or slower.
Auto-expand rulesControl when hovering is enough to open the shelf, with separate expand and collapse delays.
Hover tuningMain Mac hover and External hover tune the hover zone separately for the built-in display and connected monitors.