Launched this week
Tansei — A simple shelf for your Mac
Built for work in motion. Designed to stay close.
23 followers
Built for work in motion. Designed to stay close.
23 followers
Switch apps without losing the thread. The color you copied. The line from ChatGPT. The file you’ll need in a minute. Tansei keeps them pinned at the edge of your screen, ready to drag back the moment you need them. Everything stays on your Mac, private by design, no account needed. Try it free for 3 days, then pay once.
Hello Product Hunt 👋
Modern work doesn’t happen in one app anymore.
A prompt in ChatGPT.
A design in Figma.
A file in Finder.
A link in Safari.
The hard part isn’t finding information.
It’s keeping the right pieces close as you move between apps.
That’s why I built Tansei.
It’s a simple shelf for your Mac.
It automatically keeps the text, links, images, files, code, colors, and screenshots you copy, so they’re always within reach. Drag them into any app, paste them with your keyboard, or come back to them later.
Everything stays on your Mac. No account. No cloud.
I’d love to hear how you work:
What’s always open on your Mac?
Which apps do you switch between the most?
What’s one thing you copy over and over every day?
Thanks for taking a look — I'll be here all day.
since it auto-captures everything you copy and keeps it all local, does the shelf have any retention or auto-cleanup, or does it just grow forever until you manually clear it? curious how that's handled once you've been using it for months
@galdayan Great question! You can turn off automatic capture if you prefer, and Tansei will occasionally prompt you to archive older items once your Shelf starts to fill up. There’s also a simple Clear All option if you want a fresh start. The idea is to keep things tidy without getting in your way, while still leaving you in control of what stays and what goes.
@pooja_phillips good, sounds like you thought about both ends of that, capture everything by default but give an easy way out before it becomes clutter. the archive prompt is a nice touch instead of just letting it pile up silently
@galdayan Thanks so much and I appreciate you taking the time to comment!
Love the privacy-first approach and the idea of pinning stuff at the screen edge. One thing I'd really want is a keyboard shortcut to instantly summon the shelf and search across pinned items, instead of hunting with the mouse when I'm mid-flow. That'd make it feel even more invisible until I need it.
@gnlj0bp Thanks! 😊 That’s actually built in. Tansei has a customizable keyboard shortcut that instantly reveals the Shelf, so you don’t need to reach for the mouse. You can also start searching your saved items right away. Whether you prefer the keyboard, the mouse, or drag and drop, the idea is to make the Shelf feel effortless to access and just as easy to dismiss when you’re done. I really appreciate the feedback!
Pinned a color hex and a ChatGPT snippet earlier and honestly forgot how handy that is when bouncing between apps. Nice that it's all local too, kind of rare these days.
@berra1318314 That’s exactly the kind of small win Tansei is built for. You can pick a colour anywhere on screen and it captures the hex automatically, which saves a surprising amount of back-and-forth.
And yes, app-hopping is basically the default mode of work now. I wanted Tansei to smooth that out without adding another account, login, or cloud layer. It stays local and behaves like part of the Mac, not another service to manage.
Pinned a color and some text from ChatGPT to test it out, and dragging them back into other apps felt genuinely smooth. Love that everything stays local, no account fuss.
@ratkca43150 Keeping everything local was one of the biggest priorities from day one.
And with how much time we all spend working with AI now, constantly moving prompts, snippets, and ideas between apps, I found myself wishing this tool existed. I really hope it ends up being just as useful for you.
Love that it runs locally with no account, that's exactly what I'd want for something this personal. One thing I'd kill for: a quick hotkey to pin from anywhere, not just drag and drop. Like a global shortcut that grabs whatever's currently in my clipboard without me hunting for the app window first. Would make the whole "without losing the thread" promise even more true.
@tunahankutlubay That’s actually how Tansei works. You don’t even need a shortcut. Just copy something as you normally would, and it automatically appears on your Shelf. If you’d rather not have that, you can turn it off at any time. Whether you prefer the keyboard, the mouse, or drag and drop, the goal is to make capturing things feel effortless and stay out of your way.
Love how lightweight this feels and the local-only approach is a huge plus. One thing I'd find really useful: let me group pinned items into named stacks so I can separate work-in-progress from quick-reference snippets, and collapse the whole shelf with one keystroke when I want a clean desktop.
@fikriye921452 The goal was to make it feel native, lightweight, and at home on macOS rather than another utility running on top of it. And you can already hide or reveal the Shelf with either a keyboard shortcut or your mouse, so it stays out of the way until you need it.