This post is brought to you by Aptonic Limited, maker of Dropzone.
Drag-and-drop functionality — which lets us quickly and easily move files from place to place, into apps, onto websites — might be the most fundamental way we interact with our computers. That’s why we’re impressed by Dropzone: It’s basically an upgrade of good ol’ drag-and-drop for OS X.
With version 3.5, which drops today, Dropzone is even better.
How Dropzone works
Dropzone places a simple drop-down tab at the top of your menu bar. From there, you can drag and gather any files you’re working with into the folders, apps and other destinations you most frequently use. Integrated services like AirDrop, Imgur, Twitter and lots more mean you can skip straight to sending stuff where it needs to go.
The layout is deliciously simple, based on a grid that can double as a versatile clipboard to keep your files in place for when you need them next.
Say you want to upload a bunch of pictures to Imgur. Just grab the images — one at a time or all at once (you can store them as stacks in the Dropzone tab). Once they’re all together, simply move them to the Imgur icon in the grid.
It’s that simple, whether you’re dragging files into apps or sharing them among computers on your network.
The Dropzone grid is easily customizable, and comes integrated with OS X sharing, meaning you can effortlessly share to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or Messages. Integration with AirDrop, FTP, Amazon S3 and lots more can be supplemented with a menu of optional integrations, like ImageShack and TwitPic.
The result is a digital workspace free of clutter — and drastically less clicking through to your destinations and actions, since they’re all waiting for you right at the top of the screen. Plus, one of Dropzone’s coolest features is its open API, running on Ruby. With a little coding, you can tweak or even create from scratch whole new actions that fit your workflow needs.
In short, if you’re regularly moving a lot of stuff on or between your computers, Dropzone can save you a lot of time and energy.
What’s new in Dropzone 3.5
With version 3.5, Aptonic has added keyboard shortcuts to Dropzone, an addition that makes all the above functionality as easy as the standard “control + click” way of working with files — just a lot more useful.
The upgrade lets Dropzone 3.5 work with Apple’s new Photos app. The redesigned user interface, new app icon and new fonts make it look better than ever in OS X Yosemite.
If you’re already using Dropzone, you know how cool it is and will be getting the update to 3.5 for free. If you’re a new user, get over to the Mac App Store and try it out — a special half-off launch deal means Dropzone is going for just $5.
