The ColdArchive penguin mascot waving hello

You can't add storage to a Mac. You can still make room.

Your iPhone already does this for photos.
Now your Mac does it for everything.

What you use stays on the Mac. What you don't quietly moves to your cloud or an external drive. Nothing looks different — you just have room again.

iPhone “Optimize iPhone Storage” — old photos go to iCloud. They still sit in your album. Tap one and it comes back.

Mac ColdArchive — old files get stored away. They still sit in your folder. Double-click and they open.

You know the feeling

“1TB MacBook and it's basically full. I want to move old stuff to an external drive — is there an easy way?”

— A real question from a Mac user. Every answer was “move them yourself.”

Too scared to delete, too messy to move. And six months later you have no idea where anything went.

Don't delete anything. Move it, but leave the spot where it was.

How it works

Before

Downloads

backup-2019.zip920 MB
IMG_4821.MOV1.8 GB
Xcode-old.xip3.2 GB
meeting-notes.pdf2 MB

Available 12.4 GB

After ColdArchive

Downloads

backup-2019.zip920 MB
IMG_4821.MOV1.8 GB
Xcode-old.xip3.2 GB
meeting-notes.pdf2 MB

Available 18.3 GB

Same names, same places. The three with frost on them went into the freezer — meeting-notes.pdf, used recently, was left alone.

It finds them Unopened for 90 days, larger than 50MB. Both numbers are yours to change.

It shows you first You see the list and pick. Nothing is touched before you say so.

It leaves the spot Same folder, same name, same place. Double-click and it opens.

Then it just runs Leave it on and it quietly stores newly-old files overnight. Only if you want it to.

Just tell me what a folder is for — I'll fill in the days and megabytes. Folders you'd rather I never touch get “Keep on Mac.”

What it actually looks like

No mockups. The app, running.

You see the list first. Nothing is touched until you say so — and turning on rehearsal means it only watches for a few days, dropping any file you open even once.

What is stored, what came back, and where your free space has been going this week.

When does the space actually appear?

Start with whatever you already have. Both work — the only difference is when the space shows up.

Your Mac handles it, using the cloud you already have

Google Drive · iCloud · OneDrive · Dropbox

A copy lingers for a while, but macOS already counts it as “space I can take back,” and takes it back when things get tight.

An external drive or NAS makes it immediate

USB SSD · external HDD · Synology

The file physically leaves your Mac. The space is back the moment it moves.

On an external drive or NAS you get exactly the iPhone Photos experience — space back the second a file moves.

Your free space is under his feet

The penguin lives in your menu bar, and the ice he's standing on is your free space. A percentage doesn't register out of the corner of your eye. Cracking ice does.

The three on the right are what the app actually draws. 22pt — it fits the menu bar exactly.

A penguin standing on a solid sheet of ice

Plenty

Getting thin

The ice cracked with a piece broken off and drifting away

Tight

He gets busy when your Mac does

Idle CPU, easy waddle. Busy CPU, quick little steps. How hard your Mac is working reads at a glance, no numbers needed.

He lives your day with you

The backdrop follows the clock. Stars and a moon before dawn, bright at noon, dark again by evening. It reads the calendar, not the internet.

And he can watch the weather

By default it's just the season, so no internet is involved. Type in a city and it becomes real weather — fetched by a tiny helper that can't see your files, never by the app itself.

All three are real frames rendered by the app. Only the playback speed was tuned for the page.

You can always undo it

Delete the app and your files still come back

There's a restore script sitting in the archive folder. Double-click it and everything goes home — no app, no internet, not even the Mac you started on.

Watch for a few days first

Turn on “rehearsal” and it observes without moving anything. Touch a file even once and it drops off the list.

Work in progress stays untouched

Files inside git repos, hidden files, and any folder you exclude were never candidates to begin with.

Which is why you can leave it running overnight. Check it in the morning.

Nothing leaves your Mac

This app doesn't have permission to reach the internet at all. Don't take my word for it — here's how to check.

codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/ColdArchive.app

You'll see file permissions and the sandbox. No network entitlement. Uploading is handled by the Google Drive or iCloud app you already run. The optional weather backdrop is fetched by a small separate helper, and that helper can't see your files.

Same goes for this page. Not one external script.

Things worth knowing first

The stuff I think it's only fair to tell you before you buy.

Your Mac has been doing this for years

iCloud Photos and “Optimize Mac Storage” have worked this way for a long time. ColdArchive safely extends it to every folder and every cloud.

If you don't want Time Machine backing it up twice

Stored files already have a copy in the cloud (or on your drive). If Time Machine backs that up again, your backup disk fills twice as fast — and worse, the backup re-downloads everything from the cloud to read it, filling the space you just freed.

So the archive is excluded from Time Machine automatically. You don't have to do anything.

If there's a folder you do want Time Machine to keep, give it “Keep on Mac.” Even when the parent folder is being watched, that one is never entered.

macOS 15 or later · Apple Silicon and Intel.

$15.99~~$19.99~~

Yours for life · one payment · no account

Priced 20% below the regular price to mark the launch.

Buy

Family license (3 Macs) $23.99 ~~$29.99~~

Your iPhone already does this for photos.Now your Mac does it for everything.