stow

Frees disk space on your Mac by offloading files you aren’t using to your own S3 — and the instant any app touches one, it downloads back automatically.

By default Stow offloads files that are over 10 MB and haven’t been opened in 90 days — both thresholds are configurable. Offloaded files still show up in Finder at zero bytes on disk. The moment any process tries to read one, Stow immediately downloads it back from the cloud, byte-for-byte. No buttons, no restore command, no thinking about it.

Built on Apple’s File Provider framework — the same mechanism iCloud Drive and Dropbox use. Content is hashed, de-duplicated, and verified byte-for-byte. Everything stays in your AWS account — Stow never sees your data. Apple Silicon, macOS 14+.

Share anything with a link

Any file or folder — including ones already offloaded — can be published as a permanent public link: stow share <path>, or pick one from the menu bar. The link lands on your clipboard; anyone who has it downloads straight from your bucket. Each file gets one stable URL — run stow share on the same file again and you get the same link back (with its content refreshed), so the command doubles as “what’s the URL for this again?”. Folders are zipped so they arrive as a single download. Links are unguessable (128-bit tokens), only what you explicitly share is public, and stow unshare kills a link instantly. Already-offloaded files are copied server-side — sharing them doesn’t even re-upload.

Also: auto-cleans regenerable caches

Stow also reclaims space from the junk that quietly piles up — the package-manager and tool caches in ~/.cache, ~/.npm, ~/.bun, ~/.gradle, Hugging Face models, and more. Once a week it deletes the ones that haven’t been touched in a while. These aren’t offloaded — they’re safe to delete outright because each tool re-downloads or rebuilds them on demand. (Source, credentials, and installed toolchains are never touched.) On one machine this recovered tens of gigabytes.

Install

brew tap viraatdas/tap
brew install stow

Set up

# one-time: auto-provisions an S3 bucket in your AWS account
stow init

That’s it. A Stow folder appears in Finder’s sidebar. Drag files into it — they live in the cloud now. Open any of them and they come right back.

The CLI, if you want it

# offload a specific file now (frees disk; opens it later to restore)
stow offload ~/Movies/big-render.mov

# tune what auto-offloads (defaults: ≥10 MB, untouched ≥90 days)
stow config set-size 20
stow config set-age 30

# permanent public link — same file always returns the same URL
stow share ~/Movies/demo-reel.mov   # folders arrive as one zip
stow shares
stow unshare <token>

# reclaim regenerable caches (npm/bun/uv/gradle/HF/…); --apply to delete
stow clean
stow clean --apply

stow status                    # what’s offloaded, space saved

Files are stored in an S3 bucket in your own AWS account, using your existing credentials — Stow never sees your data. Open a file and it downloads on demand; leave it alone and it stays in the cloud. Apple Silicon, macOS 14+.