Feature Friday 09/01/26 (v2.3.4)

Platform

• General UI overhaul. More streamlined left sidebar and new location for mounting drives

• Folder templates. Folders can now be recursively saved in the UI on the workspace or drive level and then recreated on command

• Can now enable/disable the ability for people to see old versions of a stack when shared out

• Contractor role. This is useful for people mounting subdrives. This is someone added to your workspace that takes up a billing seat but has no permission except to drives they’re explicitly added to.

• Column view. In addition to list/grid, folders can now be shown in a column format and navigated via arrow keys

• Can now disable the auto updater in case you want to stay on a particular version

• Small fixes for linux build

• Drives are now loaded on workspace load. In most cases this will allow much faster times to start using your drive

ShadeFS

• Fixed a case where in some concurrent usage it could cause syncing to stop

• Pinning on slow WiFi should no longer be a network bully

Feature Friday 12/19/25 (v2.3.2)

Platform

• Proxies are about 2x faster during peak traffic

• Search queries for large drives are ~10x faster

• Filtering comments, comments can be filtered by the existence of

  • Timestamps

  • Annotations

  • Reactions

  • Public

  • Resolved

  • Unresolved

https://www.loom.com/share/256b669351c94c4f9dd642fbd41f5f36

Command Palette: Folder search is now available. Navigate your workspace faster with unified search and actions in one interface. Search across folders and files, use AI search for descriptive queries, and execute quick actions like switching drives, workspaces, or themes.

https://www.loom.com/share/ce5cbff7d2f544959a7a68846a312707

ShadeFS

• Fixed an issue where in very very rare cases particular rename patterns with unicode characters could cause the drive to unmount

• Fixed a significant issue where when files were pinned or downloading at scale, it could cause sudden unmounts

• Fixed an issue where in specific timings mounting two drives simultaneously could cause both to unmount

• Fixed modified times in the mount. Premiere/other softwares should no longer pop up with “this project has been modified”

• Mounting for subdrives! Teams can now share out subfolders and those subfolders can be mounted individually. This is good for working with contractors or someone external to your org that just need narrow access to your larger drive

• Made conflict folder creation less aggressive

https://www.loom.com/share/b52ed8f6484f4ae69be46828e476be69

• Set the drives in your workspace to have default no access to the drive

  
  

Add the user who you would like to mount a subfolder as a (billable) member in workspace members

• Share the subfolder of the drive with the user you would like to have access to mount it with at least Can edit or Has full access

• The end user should now be able to mount just that subfolder of the drive

Shared Cache

Shared Cache: Speed up file access across your team. Files already downloaded by teammates on your network are served instantly from the Shared Cache instead of re-downloading, with secure access controls ensuring you only access files you have permission to view.

https://www.loom.com/share/d6fc74aa135546afae6b788ea1393254

We are now fully ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified

Platform

• Column view and tile view

• Search queries for large drives are ~10x faster

• Folder templates! Create a template from a set of folders in your drive. That template can then then be created anywhere within the drive

• Filtering comments, comments can be filtered by the existence of

  • Timestamps

  • Annotations

  • Reactions

  • Public

  • Resolved

  • Unresolved

• New sidebar item Duplicates, displays the duplicate files

  
  

  

ShadeFS

• Fixed an issue where in very very rare cases particular rename patterns with unicode characters could cause the drive to unmount

• Fixed a significant issue where when files were pinned or downloading at scale, it could cause sudden unmounts

• Fixed an issue where in specific timings mounting two drives simultaneously could cause both to unmount

• Fixed modified times in the mount. Premiere/other softwares should no longer pop up with “this project has been modified”

• Mounting for subdrives! Teams can now share out subfolders and those subfolders can be mounted individually. This is good for working with contractors or someone external to your org that just need narrow access to your larger drive

  • Set the drives in your workspace to have default no access to the drive

    
    
    

    

    
    
    

  • Add the user who you would like to mount a subfolder as a (billable) member in workspace members

  • Share the subfolder of the drive with the user you would like to have access to mount it with at least Can edit or Has full access

  • The end user should now be able to mount just that subfolder of the drive

• Shared cache now handles write through cache. As files are added locally, when the file is fully uploaded to the server, it will also immediately become available on the shared cache, skipping the extra download step

Feature Friday 12/05/25 (v2.3.0)

Changes

• New folders on the web no longer start with a hyphen (now are untitled folder instead of - untitled folder)

• All proxies and previews have been migrated to Cloudflare. Previews and scrubbing through videos should be much more responsive especially for international teams!

Platform

• Download speed is now shown on downloads in the app

  
  

  

  
  

  https://www.loom.com/share/35c387a71fc844469f4bec24f1567e9f
  
  

• Share links can now be embedded as iframes into other applications (using </> on the share page)

  
  

  

  
  https://www.loom.com/share/bced454bb6074432b83f99d8f3cb14c1
  
  

• Pins can now be added after selecting multiple assets in the view

  
  

  

  
  https://www.loom.com/share/17a6bcb4b5af4d358fdbe87319829ec3
  
  

• Added the ability to bulk rename files in the UI

  • Add/replace/format text by selecting multiple assets and right clicking and hitting “Bulk Rename”

  
  

  

  
  https://www.loom.com/share/a98a9f4f5c1f49288e06517c09df9bc7
  
  

• Uploads can now be paused. After a short wait, uploads will stop running and can be resumed later. Refreshing or closing the app will still clear the upload state but it’s great for moving between WiFi networks or on the go!

• Fixed escape key not closing asset pop-up

• Fixed some issues around spaces inside collection password links

• Fixed issue where in some cases the video timeline wouldn’t react to clicking

• Fixed some layout issues in Premiere panel when resizing the window

• Added interactions with the enter/right arrow key for filter UI

• Fixed issue where in some cases the volume slider wasn’t modifying video volume

• Adobe Premiere panel can now be downloaded via the Adobe Exchange

• Current selected video quality is now shown in the video player

• The app can now be downloaded from the website using Safari

• Improvements to the auto updater UI

ShadeFS

• Fixed bug that would cause pinning to fail if network requests needed to be retried

• Fixed two bugs that in some short windows of time would cause a dismount when mounting drives

• Fixed other unmount caused by timings in particular read orders

• Team Site Cache (beta)! This enables teams who work together in person to share the same ShadeFS cache. When anyone connected downloads data, this data is also saved to the cache, if anyone else access it then it will be served from the site cache

Feature Monday 11/11/25 (v2.2.41)

Breaking changes

Macfuse / kernel extension installs are officially deprecated on MacOS. We will be adding a bypassable popup soon. If you are on a v2.2.3* release or used an installer that ends with .dmg please re-download from the website

In the next windows release, the default mount point will be moved to C:\\Volumes\\<your drive>. Optionally this can be remapped permanently to its original location in drive settings -> general -> custom mount path.

Platform

• Premiere pro panel! This is auto installed in the most recent version of the pkg installer

• Vastly faster time to index speeds for new files ingested

  • Including previews and proxies

• Refreshed web uploader for distributed teams. Provides consistently fast uploads to drives in distant regions

• General much faster performance across the app

• Contributor role! (disallows drive creations)

• Comment attachments. Attach any file to your comments (up to 15mb)

• Chat with / query your transcriptions

• New facial recognition! The refreshed version allows much better control over how individuals are created from faces

• Speed slider for video player

• Lots and lots of small fixes, including

  • Long file path uploads on windows

  • Sometimes file moves would fail in the app when drive was mounted

  • Issues with indexing some codecs/file combos

  • Passwords links that used passwords with whitespace at the beginning or end are now accepted

• A storage limit can now be set per drive

• Comments can now be exported

• Custom metadata attributes can be locked preventing the editing of the description

• Webhooks for public shares

• Zapier integration! Speak to Jacob about this if you’re interested in hooking Shade into other apps

• Re-queue transcriptions

• UI updates (ongoing)

• New drive directory view on the sidebar

• Custom ordering for collections (drag to reorder)

ShadeFS

• Macfuse / kernel extension installs are officially deprecated on MacOS. We will be adding a bypassable popup soon. If you are on a v2.2.3* release or used an installer that ends with .dmg please re-download from the website

• Custom mount paths! On mac, windows and linux, the default location of the mount paths can be configured

• New merging algorithm!

  • Conflicting changes now result in -conflicted-<number> extension

  • Clients are now forcefully kept in sync much more aggressively

• Scalability improvements for large drives

• Lots of improvements to finder badges

• View which files you have pinned in the desktop app

• Lots of small stability and bug fixes

Feature Friday 09/19/25 (v2.2.29)

Another huge update—this one focused on speed speed speed and a few new features.

Our desktop app now uploads and downloads between 2x and 3x faster than our competitors from our office here in New York (5gbps+).

Platform

• Version stacking! Drag two files on top of each other to create a stack

• Vastly faster desktop app download capable of >4gbps download speeds

• Vastly faster desktop app uploader capable of >5gpbs upload speeds

• Webhooks! Go to workspace settings and click “Open Dashboard” to configure your own event listeners

• New active/mountable drives now are placed on a vastly faster globally distributed storage backend

• PDF previews! First page of a pdf <15mb is rendered into a thumbnail

• Much faster time to start indexing large files (40-100gb) (~10x) and generally lower queuing times before assets begin indexing

• Notifications! Notifications for assets that you comment on as well as workspaces that you’re added to will be propagated to the “notifications” button under workspaces

• listdir latencies on the platform have been lowered dramatically

• much much lower time spent in the “processing” step when uploading on the platform

• Large tree operations in the web now reflect much more quickly (i.e moving tens of thousands of files to trash)

• Lots of other small fixes and improvements

ShadeFS

• Multipart pinning! Downloading from pins are now >3gbps

• Vastly faster merging in of changes from other users

• Lots of small bug fixes and improvements

Feature Friday 08/22/25 (v2.2.25)

Massive update these last few weeks primarily focused on speed and scale.

We’re hiring as well! If you know software engineers who have experience with postgres, python and typescript that have scaled systems from 1-100 who would be excited about joining a fast-growing company like Shade, send them our way!

Platform

• Annotations & markup-draw on video and images in a comment

• Directories can now be added to collections

• Added ranged based commenting

• Uploads and downloads (including in the mount) from us-east-1 regions should be much faster!

• Scrubbing a video and loading in previews should be much more responsive! (removed a round trip to our servers)

• When logged in you can now open a shared link in the app from the web or into a new tab

• Overall much lower latencies across the entire application

• Listdirs on the web/app are now much much faster and with more consistent latencies

• Big improvements for facial recognition

  • Improved merging individuals experience

  • Moving faces between individuals

  • Deleting faces

  • Creating new individuals from a set of selected faces

• Videos in a web-playable format will play back instantly no waiting for proxy as we can now use the source video (beta/testing this feature)

• Admins can now delete any comments even if they didn’t create them

• R2 drives should now not application error on mount

• The timestamps on comments can now be edited after creation

• Clicking out of a view that has been edited will now prompt you to save before discarding changes

• Videos that can be placed in our fast proxy queue are are now always placed in the fast proxy queue (more consistent and lower proxy times)

• Pinning a file in the app on windows now shows the status/progress

• Fixes for the “download entire folder button”

• Lots of other fixes, improvements and speedups, primarily focused on our next 10x in scale

ShadeFS

• Finder now shows uploading, downloading pinning and is pinned status of files!

• ShadeFS is now fully case insensitive

• Lots of small fixes and improvements for uploading

Feature Friday 2.0.0 to 2.0.7

You may have noticed us silently iterating behind the curtain since launch - going from release 2.0.0 → 2.0.7 in just a few weeks. We’re starting Feature Friday to keep everyone in the loop about what we’re working on and whats changed!

Features / Improvements

• Windows release!

• Created & added everyone to a demo workspace! Try visiting https://demo.shade.inc

• Sharing modal got a huge upgrade - now being able to quickly see who has access to what file across all levels of inheritance

• Published links now includes links to files and folders

• Improve preview support for hvec

• Run onboarding for personal workspaces

• Huge improvement to facial recognition, you should see

• Improve AI search when given a bad query

• Add more workspace roles

• Separated AI tags from user tags

• AI tags are now addable under the tag menu

• Add search thresholding to improve results

Bug Fixes

• Fix sticky welcome nudge

• Make ShadeFS setup sticky until someone mounts

• Fix parent folder deletions

• Fix cache corruption issue on backend

• Exclude trash from search

• Fix safari video player

• Exclude face previews from trash

We’ve been focused on bugfixes & stability but next week will feature some even bigger changes including the biggest overhaul of our metadata system ever.

We’re also starting product review calls if you want to hop on a call to go over how you’ve been using the app, what features you think are missing or really good, and how we can improve it for the next set of users that start using Shade (sign up with the link below):

https://redirect.shade.inc/?redirect=product

Feature Friday 07/25/25 (v2.2.20)

It’s been awhile since our last Feature Friday but we’re back. We’ve released quite a bit over the last few weeks but here are the important ones from the last month.

We will have a large release over the weekend and continuing over the next week as well with lots of new platform features—these notes only cover to Friday Jul 25th.

Platform

• New search algorithm under the hood! Much faster and more accurate search for big drives

• New public links UI + sharing features

  • Create multiple links with each having separate permissions for an asset / folder

  • Link expiration (expires in custom, tomorrow, EOW, etc…)

  • Temporarily disable a link

  • Delete specific links

• Rewrote downloader for desktop app

  • Fixes stalling on slow networks with big downloads

  • Saturates bandwidth more aggressively on fast connections

• Added transcription search!

• Fix more small issues on public links

• Shows network connection quality on desktop app

• (secret) Sydney storage region

• (secret) testing backend for global teams—let us know if you see slow performance with remote editing teams

• Fixes for file size filter

• Added SCIM directory sync for permissions-at-scale

• Added drive templates for custom metadata

• Facial recognition now runs much faster

• Fix issue with video player crashing

• Lots of other small fixes and improvements

ShadeFS

• Faster drive mounting! Big drives now mount more quickly. It’s not yet instant but has been dramatically improved

• Even faster ShadeFS downloader

  • In our benchmarking we now have slightly faster download compared to LucidLink

• Symbolic link support! Final Cut Pro now can link against videos outside of the library

• Much faster merging with local and remote changes

• Chunk cleanup support for BYO R2 backend

• Better process cleanup on quit

• Lots of smaller bug fixes and improvements

Secret .deb and .rpm linux builds for ShadeFS desktop—please let us know if you would like to test these early access

Feature Friday 06/07/25 (v2.2.11)

A perfect day for a Feature Friday covering a few of the big things we shipped in may

Platform

• Transcription search!

• SCIM directory sync for permissions-at-scale

• Fix issue where high latency could cause a web upload to fail on a publish link

• We’ve begun attachments and rolled out custom icon and background for collections

• Extension filter

• New onboarding (especially for BYO S3)

• Drive templates for custom metadata

• Tons of smaller bug fixes and improvements

Infrastructure

• You may have noticed job completion times are more consistent — our infrastructure now autoscales to keep job competition times below a set time

• Facial recognition now runs much faster

• Lots of small fixes and optimizations around jobs handling strange or invalid asset types

ShadeFS

• More improvements to the downloader

• Huge scaling improvements to our backend to support larger drives

• Even more improvements to sync and handling of even more cases