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Aktar feature

See every file in your bucket, not just photos

Aktar makes thumbnails the way your computer's file manager does, for videos, PDFs, RAW photos, Office and iWork documents and more, and shows them in History and the bucket view. Videos and audio play right there, streamed from your bucket.

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Free · Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad & Android · No account

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Available in
  • Mac0.13.0
  • Windows0.6.0
  • iPhone & iPad1.6.0
  • Android1.5.0

A bucket full of file icons

Storage consoles show names and sizes. To find the right recording or the right version of a deck, you download files one by one until you hit it.

Aktar shows what's inside instead. And each destination decides where thumbnails are kept: nowhere, on this device, or in your own bucket so all your devices show them.

How it works

  1. 1

    Pick a mode

    Each destination's Thumbnails setting is Off, On This Mac (the default) or In the Bucket.

  2. 2

    Upload or browse

    New uploads get a thumbnail right away, and files already in your bucket get one when they're shown.

  3. 3

    Find it at a glance

    History, the menu bar and the bucket view show previews, and videos and audio play in a file's details.

What you get

  • Almost every file type

    A video's frame, a PDF's first page, a RAW photo, a Keynote, Word or Excel document, fonts and more.

  • Your choice per destination

    Off, on this device or in the bucket. Off means nothing is made or downloaded at all.

  • Shared across devices

    In the Bucket saves thumbnails to a folder of your choice, so Aktar on your other devices shows them too.

  • Videos and audio play

    Click Play in a file's details. It streams from the bucket, private buckets too, and nothing loads before you click.

  • Tidy by design

    A thumbnail in the bucket is deleted, renamed, moved and expires with its file, and its folder is hidden in the bucket view.

  • Never sent anywhere else

    Thumbnails are made on your device by the operating system and only ever go to your own storage.

Sharp and small

Thumbnails are 512 pixels, so they look sharp on any screen, yet a few kilobytes each. On the Mac they're kept next to your history, so clearing caches doesn't lose them, and Settings › General shows how much space they take, with Clear… to remove them. Files over 25 MB that are already in your bucket aren't downloaded just for a thumbnail.

Everywhere you browse

The bucket browser shows thumbnails for every folder, not only what Aktar uploaded. The local API serves them too, so the Raycast extension shows the same previews. Aktar for Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android make thumbnails with their own system thumbnailers.

Questions

Does In the Bucket cost extra storage?

A little: thumbnails are a few kilobytes each, so 10,000 of them take tens of megabytes. They're deleted with their files, so they don't pile up.

Can I play videos from a private bucket?

Yes. Aktar streams them with a temporary signed link made on your device. See how presigned URLs work.

Will the thumbnails folder show up in my bucket?

In storage consoles, yes, as a folder (by default .aktar/thumbnails/). Aktar's bucket view and local API hide it, and leaving the In the Bucket mode asks whether to delete the ones already there.

Is this on Windows and phones too?

Yes. Aktar for Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android have the same setting and show thumbnails your other devices saved in the bucket.

Release notes

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