Dropwheel

The wheel

The orb expands into a radial wheel of targets. At the center is the hub, around it the rim with spokes and the tiles for folders, apps, groups and sorters. Tiles fly out from the center one by one; hover a tile and it highlights while its spoke lights up.

Settings pick one of four open animations, a speed and one of four themes. You can play with all of it here — the wheel is drawn by the same formulas as the app:

Interface elements

What the parts of the wheel are called — handy when reading settings, bug reports and this documentation. The numbers on the wheel match the list:

1. 1Hub / orb — the center of the open wheel; closed, it's the orb, a floating button on the desktop. Dropping onto it adds a target.
2. 2Rim — the outer ring the tiles sit around.
3. 3Spokes — radial guides from the hub to each tile; they light on hover.
4. 4Target tile — a square drop destination: a folder, an app (run target), a group or a sorter.
5. 5Tile label — the target's name under the tile.
6. 6Add tile — the dashed “+”; creates a new target at the current level.
7. 7Badge — an action or status marker on a tile: copy ⧉, move ➜, run ▶, sorter ⇅. The app itself renders the badge as a plain word (Copy, Move, Sort, Run); the demo shows it as glyph shorthand (⧉ ➜ ▶ ⇅).
8. 8Group — a tile that opens a nested level; shows the child count and its code.
9. 9Sorter — a folder with rules (amber border, ⇅) that files and folders fan out into subfolders.

Dropping a file

Drag a file onto a target tile. While the cursor is over the tile it locks as the current destination: nearby tiles dim, the label strengthens, and an action chip names what will happen: Copy or Move (hold Shift). The chip's second line answers "will it fit": the free space on the target's drive and how many items the folder already holds. On drop the file flies into the target, the tile flashes, and a toast rises from below with an undo option. The scene loops: first a copy to Downloads, then a move to Documents.

Open on approach

You don't have to open the wheel by hand. As a dragged file nears the orb it comes alive: the halo glows and the core leans toward the cursor. Get close enough and the wheel opens by itself, targets already at hand. Let go and the orb folds back and waits.

Entering a group

A group is a tile that opens a nested wheel level instead of receiving files. Clicking the Projects group rebuilds the rim: the root targets give way to the group's contents, with a “Back” tile appearing first. Clicking it returns to the root level. The reflow is the same “Pop” animation as the open.

Saving text

You can drop not only a file onto a folder tile but also selected text from a browser or editor. Dropwheel saves it to text_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-mm-ss.txt (or .md when the text looks like Markdown). The badge shows “txt”, and a toast confirms the name of the created file with an undo option.

Run: “open with”

If a target is a program or script (.exe, .bat, .ps1, .py, .jar and the like), files dropped on its tile aren't copied — they're passed to the program as arguments, the Windows “open with” behavior. The badge is amber (orange) with a ▶ triangle — the run action uses the Warning tone. Scripts the shell would only open in an editor are launched through their interpreter (e.g. .py via py). This is a launch, not a file operation, so it isn't undoable.

Risky drops are confirmed first: a “Run dropped files?” dialog before a run, “Send through Telegram?” before sending, and “Sort with watched rules?” before routing by watched rules — the action only runs after you agree.

Sorter: routing by rules

A sorter is a folder target with rules (an amber-bordered tile with a ⇅ badge). A batch dropped on it fans out into subfolders: the first rule whose conditions all match takes the file. Conditions are extension, type (image, video, audio, document, archive), name (substring or regex), size, age and created date; any condition can be inverted with a “not” tick. A rule with no conditions is the catch-all, and a whole rule can be switched off without deleting it.

A destination can build the subfolder name from tokens. From the file name — ${name} groups of a regex; plus built-ins that need no setup: the drop-time date ${date}, the file's own date ${cyear}\${cmonth}, and ${week}, ${quarter}, ${initial}, size buckets ${size} (tiny/small/…/huge, thresholds configurable) and ${slug} — the first line of the text. So one rule both matches and routes into a dated structure. Each rule has an “applies to” scope — files, folders, or both — so the sorter can date whole folders too without mistaking them for files. The same engine powers “watch folder” — the sorter files new files and folders in the background and never re-files the dated folders it created.

Routing is a risky action, so a “Sort with watched rules?” dialog appears first; files fan out into subfolders only after you agree.

Capturing a target with the orb (Alt+Shift)

To pin a folder, app or file straight from Explorer or the desktop, hold Alt+Shift and drag the orb onto the target. A ghost orb follows the cursor: over a valid target it arms — the core fills with the accent color, the halo glows, and a frame appears around the target itself. While the ghost is locked on, its aura is alive: three radar rings ping outward on a steady beat, brighter the stronger the lock.

On release the ghost furls back into the orb, which pings a confirming ring, holds a short beat — and the wheel opens with the new pinned tile first, next to the hub. A “Pinned: …” toast lets you undo the add.

Group codes

Every group has a one- or two-digit code. Hover the orb (or with the wheel open) and type the code to jump straight into that group. While you type, the hub shows the input, matching groups stay bright and the other tiles dim.

If both 1 and 11 exist, 1 opens after a short timeout waiting for a second digit, while a second 1 typed before the timeout opens 11 at once. Codes stay attached to their groups and don't shift when tiles are reordered.

Reordering tiles

A tile can be dragged to a new spot on the rim: grab it with the left button and move along the ring. The dragged tile glides along an arc behind the cursor, and the tiles it passes slide over smoothly to free the slot. The order is remembered; the “Add” tile always stays last. Dropping on “+” sends the tile to the very end.

Links, title and favicon

A link — a plain URL, tg:// or t.me/… — can be dropped on the orb or on “+”, and a quick-access tile appears. At first it just shows the site's address; in the background Dropwheel fetches the page title and favicon (png/jpg/ico/webp) and the tile updates in place: the name becomes the page title and the icon becomes the site's favicon.

Telegram web links are converted to desktop tg:// deep links where possible, so a t.me tile opens Telegram Desktop.

Undo

Almost any action can be reverted. After a move, copy, text save or adding a target, a toast with an “Undo” link appears at the bottom, active for 6 seconds. Clicking it puts files back (copies to the Recycle Bin, moved files back to their source) or removes the tile you just added. Launching a program and background auto-sort are not undoable.

Orb behavior

The orb can be dragged anywhere on screen by holding Alt and left-dragging (to any monitor; adding Shift pins instead of moving). Its position is remembered between runs.

With idle fade on, the orb dims to near-invisible after a set time, and any mouse movement nearby brings it right back. The orb also hides itself in full-screen apps — games and presentations — and reappears when they exit.

The wheel can also be summoned right at the cursor with the global hotkey Ctrl+Alt+Space (the shortcut is configurable).

Confidence layer

While a file hovers over the wheel, every target shows in advance what it will do with it: a coloured ring and a short action chip, with a status line under the target you're over. Compatible targets light up by role — green for copy, amber for rules and run — while targets that can't take the payload dim back, so the choice is clear before you drop.

Keyboard and accessibility

The open wheel works without a mouse. Tab and the arrow keys move focus between tiles — the focused tile gets a ring and a “Focus” chip — Enter or Space act as a click, and Escape closes the wheel. The focused or hovered target is announced through a screen reader.

Crowded levels

A small level always draws as the classic single ring. When a level fills up, the surplus can flow onto a second, outer ring instead of cramming everything onto one rim. The layout is chosen in Settings.

The threshold is how many real targets fit before the second ring appears (4 to 16). The always-present tiles — “+” and, inside a group, “Back” — don't count. Switch the layout to see how 14 targets are laid out.