EagleFiler Press

This page lists some of the significant EagleFiler reviews and recommendations in the press. For information about new releases, please see the version history and the blog archive.

May 2024 - The Tech Daddy recommends EagleFiler:

I’ll profile EagleFiler in depth in a later post, as it’s one of my Desert Island Apps—an app I can’t live without. It’s by Michael Tsai, the same genius behind SpamSieve, which is also a DIA; I recommend both heartily. SpamSieve is the most effective means of dealing with spam, while EagleFiler is an archiving app. It can gather, index, store, and search many types of files and store them in its libraries. However, its superpower is how it can archive your email.

By interacting directly with all major mail apps, EagleFiler can quickly import all the messages in a selected mailbox or a selected portion with one keystroke. Once imported, EagleFiler will start indexing, and then you’ll see the same mailbox with the same messages appear in the main library window. You can then delete the messages—or the entire mailbox in question—inside your mail app and move on to the next one.

Once emails are ensconced inside EagleFiler, you can search them in myriad ways, and the results appear almost instantly. EagleFiler has search methods that are often more robust than most mail apps!
August 2023 - Olaf Lichy recommends EagleFiler in the ISCB (Interest Group of Visually Impaired Computer Users) newsletter (translated from German):

A folder named “to import” is available for automatic import into EagleFiler. You should link this folder to your scanner or use it if you want to add new objects - whether on the Mac at home or on the go with an iPhone or iPad.

The Attach Note function is much more interesting. It is possible to create a note for each file, the information from which is also transferred to the internal database. For example, with a search term that is not in the text of the respective file but only in the note, this file can still be found. It could be interesting for visually impaired users to store markers for files.

The fascinating thing is the speed: my wife and I work together in EagleFiler. Each of us has a slightly different approach to filing files. If we were to work together on cloud storage like this, we would probably spend a lot of time searching. However, because each of us knows what to look for and what should be in the document we’re looking for, EagleFiler searches for us. And he finds. And that within seconds. With more than 15,000 documents, this is always inspiring. This is the only way to work smoothly. Who doesn’t know them, the absolutely annoying interruptions, because you are interrupted for a process you are working on (tax return, official application, etc.) because the reference document (even if it is only the identity card and thus the personal ID) is sought must become.

The author of EagleFiler is open to inquiries from our circle of people and the support is absolutely good.

You will have a lot of fun and, above all, you will save an incredible amount of time using software like EagleFiler. By the way:As far as I know, there is currently only this one app for the Mac. So far I haven’t found anything comparable. But to be honest: I’m not looking anymore either, because EagleFiler is simply ideal for our group of people, as long as they own more than one file folder. And even then, EagleFiler can help find documents faster than working in braille or large print.
March 2022 - Spider-Mac recommends EagleFiler, saying that it is “distinguished by excellent quality against an affordable price” (Italian, translation from Apple):

It is an essential tool for the “digital pack rat” (for those compulsively tending to store any file).
December 2021 - MacInformer selects EagleFiler as an Editor’s Pick.
November 2021 - Rob Griffiths writes about using EagleFiler for his e-mail archive:

After testing it for a bit, I decided to import all my saved email from before 2021 into files and folders in EagleFiler. Import from Mail is ridiculously easy—select a mailbox or a number of messages and press Option-F1 in Mail.

Imported Mail comes with everything, including attachments and even flags.

[…]

The built-in search and smart folders are impressively fast, and the smart folders feature lets you create multiple and/any criteria with any set of conditions, making for some very powerful saved searches.
October 2021 - Apps Like These reviews EagleFiler:

EagleFiler is great for keeping order on your Mac.
July 2021 - MacInformer review EagleFiler:

Good news is that there is nothing complicated about using EagleFiler. In fact, there is a very straightforward way by which you can import practically any bit of info by simply dragging and dropping it onto a sort of floating pad.

[…]

Fortunately, EagleFiler seamlessly integrates with other macOS tools, specially Finder. So, there is no risk that the contents appear distorted. Similarly, it has the ability to import contents from various websites without affecting the original structure, something that other similar tools may fail to do properly.
August 2020 - Smile Software recommends EagleFiler for organizing academic information.
July 2020 - The Hidden Blog recommends EagleFiler for a paperless office.
December 2019 - MacHow2 recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler [is] incredibly good at what it does – making it easier to manage and find documents, files and folders on your Mac. EagleFiler excels when it comes to document organization allowing you to drag, drop and organize PDFs with ease.

One of the best features of EagleFiler is the fact that it preserves the original format of documents i.e. it doesn’t use its own propriety format to save files meaning it’s easier to use or export them for use in other apps.

Syncing is also supported via services such as DropBox, Google Drive and iCloud.
September 2019 - Sentinel Consulting Group of L.A. recommends EagleFiler:

I use a Mac in the office and an iPad & iPhone in the field. I have researched a great deal of software to streamline my workflow (Evernote, OneNote, GoogleDocs, and more). EagleFiler is the only File Manager application I need and it has become invaluable to our business.
August 2019 - waerfa.com reviews EagleFiler (Chinese, translation).
June 2019 - Vous et Votre Mac Magazine #157 reviews EagleFiler (French).
April 2019 - TidBITS writes:

If you don’t trust Mail entirely, you could use C-Command Software’s EagleFiler [to] archive a copy of everything outside of Mail.
February 2019 - MacHow2 recommends EagleFiler as one of the best Mac tools for a paperless office, calling it “an extremely powerful package that’s been lovingly maintained over the years.”
February 2019 - Cognitive Productivity with macOS recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler has more horsepower than Yep, but it is also much easier to use than DEVONthink. Moreover, unlike Evernote and DEVONthink, as noted above, it stores your data in folders, directly on the Finder. So you can use all your favorite apps with it, right out of the box.
June 2018 - The Wall Street Journal mentions EagleFiler.
April 2017 - ScreenCastsOnline covers EagleFiler.
March 2017 - Mac360 reviews EagleFiler:

Behold! Your new Mac file management system. A few global hotkeys makes it easy to use the keyboard to import files from other applications, including webpages, email from Mail, or whatever file you’re viewing in another application.

Speaking of Mail, most of us have email that dates back a decade or two and that begins to clutter Mail on your Mac. So, archive what you think you might need at a later date but don’t want visible to clutter up your daily email routine. EagleFiler archives email as email files, not as some clumsy text or RTF file.
February 2017 - dFlect’s Essential Applications for macOS recommends EagleFiler with 5 stars:

This is two programs in one: The best email archiver I know, and a universal file manager. […] Besides that, it has an excellent tagging system, which can (optionally and on a per-library base) be isolated from the Finder tags.
November 2016 - ifun.de (German) reviews EagleFiler.
August 2016 - The Mac Geek Gab Podcast recommends EagleFiler for archiving e-mails.
June 2016 - OfficeForMacHelp recommends archiving e-mails to EagleFiler:

As the years go buy a user’s Profile (Identity) gets larger and larger. I often see users with huge Profiles (Identities) 50GB and larger. Outlook has become sluggish under the weight of many GB of data. Not only is Outlook affected but on a small SSD drive, Outlook could be taking up the majority of space used. Consider this like a visit to your doctor. You can ignore the advice or wait until your Outlook Profile (Identity) has a fatal heart attack and you lose data.
March 2016 - Foliovision recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler with its fair $40 license let you do pretty much whatever you like. Great documentation and support available from Michael Tsai is personal and of high quality (I’ve had good answers myself as well as seeing much public praise for the support).
March 2016 - Mac360 says that “Every Mac User With Files In The Documents Folder Needs” EagleFiler:

This is the story of a serious Mac app for serious Mac users. If your Documents folder is stuffed with all kinds of files and you’re adding dozens more each day then you know the value of good file organization.

It’s a pain. Files can be stuffed into folders by file type, by project, by date of use, or by Apple’s new but cumbersome tagging system in OS X. Is there a better way? There is and it’s beautiful, worth the money and the learning curve[…]
October 2015 - McSolo recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler is the perfect app for Mac digital pack rats, those of us who capture pieces of information to, well, because they might be useful or valuable someday. Think of it as a digital file cabinet but capable of expanding beyond a single upright file cabinet to a whole wall of cabinets. […] EagleFiler handles multiple libraries so files can be organized to suit your workflow. Files can also be previewed within EagleFiler and some files can be created and edited. Each library can be encrypted and password protected.
October 2015 - Donnie Lawson, author of The Paperless Home writes:

EagleFiler “libraries” are pretty compelling. They use an open format and regular old files and folders so that your documents can be accessed by all your other applications, outside the EagleFiler software. This is a clear advantage EagleFiler has over the propriety Evernote database files (.enex). […] There is a lot to like for the reasonable $40 price tag.
September 2015 - Take Control of Apple Mail, Third Edition recommends EagleFiler:

Because its user interface is similar to Mail’s, Mail users may find it particularly easy to pick up. Unlike DEVONthink Pro Office, which uses a special database format to store and index its data, EagleFiler stores files in an easy-to-navigate Finder hierarchy.
April 2015 - Gavin Naquin recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler has so many attributes that make it the perfect application to organize your paperless office that it requires a series of articles to cover, however, it is as easy as a Mac to use! Suffice it to say, “EagleFiler is a must for a paperless Mac office.” Even this article was written using EagleFiler.
February 2015 - Macworld recommends EagleFiler:

The app keeps everything organized for you, making your entire archive—which you can also encrypt for added security—completely taggable and searchable for future reference.
January 2015 - Tim Hannon recommends EagleFiler for archiving e-mail from Outlook:

I heartily recommend EagleFiler since it’s such a versatile application.
January 2015 - Jesse Liberty recommends EagleFiler:

Drag just about anything in and find it fast when you need it. Great way, for example, to archive your email.
November 2014 - Tera Talks recommends EagleFiler:

From time to time I’ll run into a Mac app that’s been around awhile and asked myself, “Where have you been all my life?” even though I’m not anywhere near finishing up all my life.

In other words, it’s an app that is so good you want to tell friends and neighbors about it because it’s a solution that fits the problem so well […] a Mac app that is so wonderful at gathering and storing pieces of information in a hurry, storing it on your Mac, and making it drop dead easy to get to it.
July 2014 - DocumentSnap recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler also has a great clipper function. If you have a file selected, are viewing a web page, or viewing have email messages selected, hit the clipping shortcut (by default F1) and the information will be automatically imported.
May 2014 - Mac360 recommends EagleFiler:

A few years ago [my wife] turned me on to a Mac app which archives files, makes it easy to archive files, but just as easy to find what gets archived.

The app is called EagleFiler. It’s been around a few years so it’s robust, fast, and feature laden.
March 2014 - The Mac Power Users podcast recommends EagleFiler.
February 2013 - Mac.AppStorm recommends EagleFiler:

Turns out Eaglefiler has one of the fastest searches among the applications listed in this article. You may also navigate through the tags, as the more you select, narrower becomes the search results.
December 2012 - Sound Support & Solutions recommends EagleFiler:

Because email is so central to my business, I like to hold onto just about every message I send or receive. This means I have mail messages that I sent between the late 1990s and the present. Rather than storing years of these email messages in Mail, I archive them and store them in EagleFiler. In EagleFiler I can view the individual email messages including all of the header (to, from, date and subject) information and the message itself. I can also search for words contained in the messages. EagleFiler stores both the email message and the attachment.
September 2012 - The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler walks a middle path between a straight nested folder and tagged file storage plan. I know some lawyers that track every new case with a separate EagleFiler project.
September 2012 - Macworld recommends EagleFiler:

This “digital filing cabinet” can be used, among many other things, to archive your email in a searchable database, so you can streamline how much email is actually stored in Mail.
March 2012 - Macworld Australia recommends EagleFiler for managing PDFs of scanned paper documents.
November 2011 - EagleFiler is on Mike Gunderloy’s My Tools of the Trade list for “organizing heaps of miscellaneous information and documents.”
September 2011 - TidBITS recommends EagleFiler for converting e-mail from Eudora:

The import worked perfectly, with EagleFiler bringing the mailboxes in fairly quickly, and preserving the entire folder structure for easy browsing. […] I find it easy to use, attractive, and entirely functional.
September 2011 - Scott Lowe switches to EagleFiler:

EagleFiler, on the other hand, simply leveraged the default applications I used with Mac OS X. PDFs opened in Skim, text files opened in TextMate (where I could then use TextMate bundles to convert formats between HTML, plain text, and Markdown), and RTF documents opened in Bean (which I’d adopted as a lightweight editor over the oh-so-bulky Microsoft Word). This made it a great fit for the new way I was working with documents. In addition, EagleFiler came with some useful capture functionality built-in, eliminating the need for some of my home-grown AppleScripts.
August 2011 - Macworld’s “Say Farewell to Paper” article recommends EagleFiler (p. 53).
July 2011 - David Pogue recommends EagleFiler in his New York Times blog.
July 2011 - Seattle24x7 reviews EagleFiler, rating it 5/5.
July 2011 - MacFan magazine (Dutch) #95/p.48 recommends EagleFiler for archiving e-mail, highlighting its flexibility and simple interface.
April 2011 - Macworld/Computerworld’s “How to make your office paperless” recommends EagleFiler.
December 2010 - Vincent Danen at TechRepublic writes:

I am a complete and total pack rat, and I love how EagleFiler lets me organize all of my digital things, and I also appreciate how it allows me to access that data from anywhere, and from any application. EagleFiler is one of the applications that is constantly open on my desktop, and it’s used all day long. I know my hard drive would be an utter disaster without it.
December 2010 - OfficeforMacHelp.com recommends using EagleFiler to archive messages from Outlook and Entourage to prevent catastrophic data loss and if you need to move to a different mail program.
November 2010 - TidBITS Watchlist covers the release of EagleFiler 1.5.
October 2010 - Matt Neuburg describes in TidBITS how he used EagleFiler to export his e-mail from Microsoft Outlook 2011:

So, with the new version of EagleFiler in hand, I selected all my messages in Outlook and told EagleFiler to import them by pressing the F1 key, right there in Outlook. In less time than it took to make myself a fresh cup of cappuccino with my handy-dandy Pavoni Napolitana, EagleFiler had grabbed all my mail messages and assembled them into mbox files, each file having the name of the Outlook mailbox or mail “folder” from which its messages came.
September 2010 - Nicholas Hundley uses EagleFiler to organize his life:

…it’s a great, insanely easy way to keep everything organized in folders, using tags, and very easy to access and find things quickly. I’m blown away by what it can do.
June 2010 - The American Bar Association’s GPSOLO magazine recommends EagleFiler:

A similar program allowing the easy importation and collection of notes and other materials is EagleFiler. Like NoteBook, EagleFiler features excellent documentation and support.
February 2010 - Matt Neuburg reviews EagleFiler in TidBITS:

EagleFiler combines ease of use with an underlying ingenuity that makes it feel simple, fast, and lightweight. It’s packed with too many clever touches for me to list. The range of things you can import, of ways you can perform an import, and of smart things EagleFiler can do in response, is quite astounding…
December 2009 - View from the Dock reviews EagleFiler:

I’ve just completed my 30-day trial, and I’ve grown enthusiastic to the point of dependency. That speaks well for EagleFiler. I would say this app gave me much better focus into my documents, something that the Finder lacks.
December 2009 - WebdesignerDepot recommends EagleFiler:

EagleFiler is an information management app for Mac OS X that lets you archive and search PDF files, word-processing documents, images, web pages, mail and more. It has a three-pane interface similar to that of most email programs. Files are stored in a universal format, so they're accessible from any application. Files can be encrypted, and you can add notes, tags, labels and meta data to them.
July 2009 - Kate MacKenzie on using EagleFiler control information anxiety:

EagleFiler looks like other Mac applications; highly reminiscent of iPhone or Mail or iTunes, so it’s easy to use. Save email messages, bookmarks, links to interesting sites, project notes, PDFs, even complete web pages.…Searching is nearly instant using keywords, tags which you can create, and even phrase-based searches. It’s almost fun.
July 2009 - Tagamac’s Ian Beck calls EagleFiler his “all-time favorite file library.”
June 2009 - Clay Moore describes using EagleFiler along with other applications to write stories for publication.
May 2009 - Macworld reviews EagleFiler:

It’s a vital tool for the digital pack rat.…EagleFiler’s versatility lies in its ability to accept a myriad number of files and formats. The application’s tagging, note-taking, and searching capabilities make finding that one file you stored in EagleFiler a year ago and want to retrieve today a cinch.
May 2009 - The Mac Power Users Podcast recommends EagleFiler (audio starting at 46:40):

Another nice document management program is EagleFiler, which is from one of my favorite companies, C-Command.…It’s rock solid. The nice thing about EagleFiler is that you can open separate files for separate projects.
May 2009 - Coloured Complexity recommends EagleFiler as software for the Canadian Mac lawyer.
March 2009 - EagleFiler is among hf911’s Favorite Mac Software:

The simplicity of EagleFiler is what won me over. That, and the price.
February 2009 - The Entourage Help Blog recommends EagleFiler for archiving e-mails:

Entourage will thank you for it and the whole application sure feels a lot snappier for me after archiving the 30,000 e-mails that were patiently waiting in the “On my computer” folders.
November 2008 - The Mac Observer reviews Three Organizer Programs For Writers.
October 2008 - Tagamac writes:

Despite its unprepossessing version number, EagleFiler 1.4 is a big and worthwhile update to an already fantastic product.…If you have never given EagleFiler a try, now would be an excellent time to give it a whirl.
August 2008 - EagleFiler is among Susan’s Favorite Mac Software:

It’s really nice to have a place to put old e-mail (you can archive your Mac inbox in EagleFiler), store Web pages and PDFs, and accumulate research materials.
July 2008 - Clay’s Digital Classroom likes EagleFiler for note management.
May 2008 - NoodleMac does a short review of EagleFiler:

Remarkably useful and elegant personal information manager. Stores and retrieves almost anything; email, snippets, URLs, photos, images, documents, files, whatever. Simple design, highly flexible organization.
May 2008 - Web Worker Daily writes:

After six months with it, I’m still loving my $430 Fujitsu ScanSnap. Coupled with a copy of EagleFiler and a cheap shredder, it gets me as close to the paperless office as I ever expect to get.
April 2008 - EagleFiler tops Dana Kashubeck’s list of apps she uses.
January 2008 - InformationWeek reviews EagleFiler:

EagleFiler provides a simple way to keep track of documents, images, e-mails, and Web pages. Unlike other outliners, it uses the standard Mac filesystem and applications to help futureproof your data.
September 2007 - David Sparks reviews EagleFiler in episode 125 of the MacReviewCast (audio starting at 10:28) and at MacSparky:

I like the user interface. It is clean and doesn’t get in my way. Unlike some of the other data management programs, EagleFiler seeks to organize all of your data. You can drop just about anything into it, including mail, Web pages, PDF files, word processing documents, and images.
August 2007 - Circle Six Design:

C-Command, the makers of the excellent Spam filtering software, SpamSieve, have released an app called EagleFiler. This app seems to have existed under the radar for a little while now, but I thought it was time to give it a try. I’m now a die-hard user. Here’s why…
August 2007 - EagleFiler is one of Angela Booth’s Best Mac programs for writers found in 2007:

Press F1 and it’s saved. Fantastically useful, especially since it saves all Web pages, PDFs etc in on your hard drive, not in a proprietary format. I use it to keep track of Comments I make on blogs and forums, and email messages I write to my writing students.
June 2007 - Leo Laporte features EagleFiler as his software pick of the week on MacBreak Weekly 45 (audio starting at 56:30).
March 2007 - Melodie Neal’s Deep Litter “Litter Sorters: A Personal Evaluation of Mac Organizer Software” looks at EagleFiler:

EagleFiler stores files individually, in dedicated folders, and uses an SQL database to manage files and their contents. This meets my criteria for separate storage, and ensures that I can get files out of the application in the same format that they went in, because EagleFiler does not alter the formats.

She ends up choosing EagleFiler, in part because:

I can drag an item from the EagleFiler “Records List” window straight into the Curio “Idea Space,” and because Curio uses links to files in the underlying file system (unless you specifically tell it to import its own copy of a file), Curio references the same physical instance of the item as EagleFiler. This gives me EagleFiler as the “filing cabinet full of folders of stuff,” and Curio as the work space for aggregating bits and pieces into a greater whole. It also gives me simple data exchange between the two applications, without keeping duplicate copies of documents, and wasting disk space.
March 2007 - IT-Enquirer writes:

EagleFiler gets five cubes for archiving e-mail from me.
November 2006 - SurfBits reviews EagleFiler 1.0.2:

Obviously EagleFiler isn’t the first product of its kind in this category but after using it for a while, a few things become clear. The developer has done an excellent job of integrating it with the rest of the operating system. He’s also looked at the real world needs of people and how they interact with their information and then built a product around those needs.…It is a very mature 1.0 release and as long as he continues to listen to his users, EagleFiler has a bright future ahead of it.
November 2006 - Ted Goranson writes about EagleFiler in About This Particular Outliner:

Suppose we added yet more item types to the hierarchy, and we made them active, and we allowed them to have drags to assign or change behavior. I claim to have invented this and have explored all sorts of different behavior. It’s nice to see EagleFiler use it in a simple, elegant way. One sort of metadata that EagleFiler manages is the notion of a “tag.” The user can create these and they appear in a Tags folder. If you drag a file in EagleFiler to one of the tags (which exists in the same source list as other folders) the file gets assigned that tag. Tags are user-defined and have an icon or badge associated with them. It’s a clever UI for assigning metadata, and is generalizable to any outliner.
October 2006 - Tim Gaden of Hawk Wings reviews EagleFiler 1.0.2:

I was very impressed. It is more flexible than Yojimbo. Its open format makes it more attractive than SOHO Notes. EagleFiler doesn’t have the full range of extra features—syncing, blogging support, full-screen option, alarms, etc—that SOHO Notes provides. That’s a pleasing lack of feature bloat for me.
October 2006 - Daniel Jalkut reviews EagleFiler 1.0.2:

[The open library] is a dream feature for timid, uncertain users. And it’s what makes the application more of a true “filer” than some of the other solutions. While other apps do a great job of storing your information, you are not so free to dump the contents out on the floor and go rummaging through them. With EagleFiler, you can empty the filing cabinet before you burn it. Other applications tend to offer similar abilities, but only through explicit “export” commands, where the sanity of the resulting data is in the hands of the application. EagleFiler makes it easy to jump on board, because it’s just as easy to jump back off.