ZumiLabs
A file manager that lives
inside your browser.
Sidekick lets you browse, preview, search, and organise files on your local machine — entirely within the browser. No installation, no uploads, no server. Open a folder, and you're in.
More than a file picker. Less than a full OS.
Sidekick fills the gap between "open a file dialog" and "use Finder/Explorer." It's a rich, interactive browser for your local files — built for the web.
lang attribute to the component. English is the default; additional locales are bundled — no network requests needed.See your files the way that fits the task.
Switch between three views depending on whether you need a visual overview, a compact list, or a focused previewer.
Visual overview at a glance.
Grid view shows thumbnail previews for every image and video in the folder. Images render inline. Videos generate a first-frame thumbnail automatically — once extracted, it's cached as a hidden sidecar file so subsequent visits are instant.
Details, sorting, and grouping.
List view shows files in a scannable table with columns for name, type, size, and last modified date. Sort by any column, ascending or descending. Group by type to separate images, videos, audio, documents, and other files into their own sections.
Focus on one file. Browse through the rest.
Filmstrip mode gives you a large preview panel for the selected file, with a horizontal scrolling thumbnail strip below. It's built for reviewing sequences of images — designs, frames, photos — where you need to scan forward and back quickly.
The details that make the difference.
Attach data to any file — no database needed.
Sidecar files are hidden companion files stored alongside each asset — for example, .photo.jpg lives next to photo.jpg. They carry any metadata you want: tags, captions, prompt text, review notes. Sidekick reads them automatically, shows the content in the Properties panel, and includes them in search. When you copy, move, or delete a file, its sidecar travels with it.
.hero-banner.jpg containing {"tags": ["hero", "summer"], "caption": "Summer campaign hero image"}hero-banner.jpg fileGather files from anywhere. Export in one go.
Collections are a virtual basket. Browse through any folder, right-click a file, and add it to your Collection. Once you've gathered everything you need — from however many different folders — open the Collection view and ZIP the whole batch in one click.
Drop a file manager into any web app. Two lines of HTML.
Sidekick ships as a self-contained web component — a single JavaScript file that registers a custom <sidekick-manager> element. Add it to any page and you get the full file manager.
lang, hide-inspector, no-hash-routing
transform mode)
The whole file manager is one file.
Sidekick is distributed as a single self-contained IIFE bundle: sidekick-manager.iife.js. Drop it in your project, add the custom element tag to your page, and the full file manager is live. No npm required. No build-time dependencies. Works in any HTML page or web app.
Everything — React 18, TailwindCSS, all UI components, icons, and locale files — is compiled into that single bundle. Your host app doesn't need to know about any of it.
cd apps/file-browser
npm install
npm run dev
<sidekick-manager> component inside a demo host app (even a simple wrapper page with a nav/sidebar)A file manager built into the tools that need one.
Common questions.
No. Sidekick uses the browser's File System Access API to read files directly from your machine. Nothing is transmitted over the network. Your files never leave your computer — Sidekick operates entirely within the browser sandbox.
When you click "Select Local Directory," Chrome shows a native OS folder picker. You choose exactly which folder to grant access to — Sidekick cannot read any other folders on your machine. The permission is sandboxed to that single folder and its children. It's also not persistent by default: permission resets when the page is reloaded or the browser is closed. Sidekick stores the FileSystemDirectoryHandle in IndexedDB to restore access on return visits, but Chrome will prompt you again to confirm if the permission has lapsed. You remain in full control.
Sidekick requires a Chromium-based browser — Chrome 86 or later, Edge, or Opera. The writable File System Access API (used for saving, moving, and deleting files without download dialogs) is not supported in Firefox or Safari. Read-only preview works more broadly, but the full feature set needs Chromium.
Sidecar files are hidden companion files stored alongside each asset. They use a dot-prefix format: .filename.ext. On macOS and Linux, files starting with a dot are hidden by default and won't appear in Finder or other apps. They only appear in Sidekick. You can ignore or delete them at any time — Sidekick doesn't require them to function.
Both. Sidekick has a standalone development app you can run locally with npm run dev — open your browser, select a directory, and use it as a full-screen file manager. It also ships as an embeddable web component (<sidekick-manager>) for adding to any host app. The standalone mode is ideal for direct use; the component mode is for integrating into your own tools.
Yes. Recent workspaces are persisted in IndexedDB in the browser, so your previously opened directories appear on next visit. You can also explicitly Bookmark any folder for one-click return access. Both bookmarks and recent workspaces survive browser restarts.