As a Screencastsonline subscriber, I stumbled upon their Bloom tutorial.
If you are a subscriber, you have to watch the tutorial. @Leegarrett does an awesome job to demonstrate what can be done with the app. It is quite impressive. It does not happen often these days with apps out there, but I never have heard of Bloom. This may be the first Finder “replacement” that could stick in my daily routine.
The app’s website:
So, what does make Bloom so interesting in comparison to so many competitors that already have been out there quite some time?
For me, it is:
creating workspaces for certain tasks (work, hobbies…)
the general UI
simple things like auto column resize in every view option that actually does work
images operations
folder scan
advanced rename
quite an impressive number of updates in recent months with an impressive changelog Bloom - Finder, but Refined
and much more.
So, how much is this subscription? $16 for three Macs, a one-time purchase.
Bought Bloom and at first blush it seems simple but after watching SCO’s review I was amazed at how much functionality is in the app because it doesn’t seem overburdened with features. Sad for me my Pathfinder license just renewed but I think by the end of the year I’ll be comfortable with Bloom and have it across all of my Macs. It’s going to be stiff competition for Pathfinder and Forklift.
Wow Christian you are really kind to post that. In fairness, it’s a lot easier to do a decent job covering an app when it’s one that, out of nothing, you end up using religiously and becomes part of your workflow. Finding new features for the outline ends up being a joy rather than ‘work’. We cover a lot of apps but can’t end up using them all daily so was happy to spend a little longer than normal on this one.
Ive used it for a while, it definitely sits alongside Forklift and Pathfinder as upgrades on Finder, though I wouldn’t say its outright better than either. Its more that it has different pros and cons. But its very active in its development, so new stuff pops up all the time.
You got that right. Every time I sat down to record, a new feature had landed. That’s why it took me so long to finally get it released! Had the same with Updatest today. Some of these indie developers really work hard.
I picked up the latest version two days before our show was due to drop (which is today) so couldn’t get to reshoot. Thankfully, everything underlying is pretty much the same, it just looks a lot cleaner now, so I hurriedly put in a cheeky little lower-third note explaining the interface is a little different now and re-exported the videos. Couldn’t do much else. Hopefully people won’t mind too much.
First time in a couple of years it’s happened and certainly not going to complain as the interface is much easier to use now.
Used it a bit instead of Finder this evening and that was a pretty good experience!
I’m quite confused about (at least) two features though:
There’s a OneDrive icon in the sidebar, but I can’t figure out how to configure that (I have multiple OneDrive accounts, but I don’t have the OneDrive app installed on my Mac)
Folder Scan is mentioned by @Christian and on their website, but how do I start that?
Also does Bloom support SFTP and WebDAV? (Those are the main reason I use ForkLift v4)
With regards to SFTP and WebDAV: I am using Mountain Duck to mount my web server.
It does integrate the web server as a disk into the system. It is available to any app then. You can use WebDAV, SFTP, and whatnot. You could even integrate an OneDrive instance, but I have not done that.
EDIT: I tried to access OneDrive via Mountain Duck - works like a charm.
Interesting. I started using this a couple of months ago in prep for a video on it, and my machine started to hang a lot so I haven’t revisited. I will do so, as would be good to get it working alongside Bloom.
I have been noticing freezes in Cyberduck when I connect to my web server and leave the Cyberduck window open in a connected state for a long time without downloading or uploading files. Apparently, Cyberduck does not like the eventual disconnect from the server and freezes. I have had no issues with Mountain Duck, though. The thing is that I do not use those mounted connections very often (sometimes not even daily).
A little note that may or may not be interesting: My desktop Mac is being shut down daily. It does not run 24/7. My MacBook Pro is not being shut down, but it is sleeping with a closed lid when not in use.
I’m using Bloom a lot. But it is more a Finder addition. I use it when I need to sort stuff and when I need more than 1 pane. It is awesome and much much faster than similar apps like Forklift.
However, I would like to use it for SFTP-ing to my Raspberry Pi devices using SSH keys stored in 1Password. This requires using public keys instead of private keys in the app’s configuration and that does not seem to work with CloudMounter (it does in ForkLift).
Is my conclusion correct that Bloom does not support Finder’s “Saved Searches”?
In Finder I created such a “folder” to quickly see all documents that got updated in the last week and I use it a lot (for my Weekly Review and for backups).
I don’t think Bloom currently supports Saved Searches. I’ve set Bloom as my default file manager and use it about 90% of the time. I still use Finder for features that Bloom doesn’t support.
Bloom - Finder, but Refined
$16 for three Macs, a one-time purchase.
