Native macOS app · Free

Keep track of the papers
you read, so you can
find them again.

A fast, native macOS app to collect → tag → rate → recall papers, books, and reports. Plain files in a folder you own. No account, no subscription.

Download for macOS View on GitHub

macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon & Intel · Free

Why Sift

Reference managers got heavy. Sift didn't. Collect a paper the moment you find it, tag it, rate it, and find it again months later. That's the whole loop.

  • It's yours, as plain files

    Each paper is a PDF plus a small JSON file. Open, back up, grep, or sync it yourself. No lock-in.

  • Fast and native

    A native Mac app that launches instantly and opens PDFs in Preview. Small and quick.

  • No account, no tracking

    No login, no telemetry. Download it once and it's yours.

  • Smart only if you want

    Optional: with a local AI tool like Ollama or Claude Code installed, Sift auto-tags and summarizes papers on your machine. Without one, everything else works exactly the same.

Sync & Cost

Sift writes plain files to any folder you choose. Put that folder in iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive and your desktop sync client handles the rest. No sync server, no account.

The part that saves you money

Zotero charges past its 300 MB free tier ($20/$60/$120 a year for 2/6/unlimited GB), and PDFs pass that quickly. Sift runs no storage at all, so your papers use the cloud storage you already pay for. iCloud's free 5 GB alone is about 16× Zotero's free limit.

If you already pay for the cloud, you don't also pay for the reference manager's cloud.

A Look at the App

Three panes: filter on the left, your library in the middle, the paper's details on the right.

Sift's three-pane window. Left sidebar shows Library filters (All, Unread, Saved, Rated 4+) and a tag list. Centre pane lists papers with titles, authors, years, and star ratings. Right detail pane shows the selected paper's title, five-star rating, and tag chips grouped by Topics, Methods, and Applications, with an Open in Preview button.
Sift running on macOS — sidebar, paper list, and detail pane.

Install in Three Steps

This build is signed ad-hoc (not notarized), so Gatekeeper warns on first launch. The right-click trick is needed once.

  1. Download the DMG

    Grab Sift-<version>.dmg from the latest release.

  2. Drag to Applications

    Open the DMG and drag Sift.app into your Applications folder.

  3. Right-click → Open

    Right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again to clear the first-launch warning.

Download Sift for macOS

Free · macOS 14+ · no account required

Deliberately Simple

Sift stays focused on cataloging the papers you read. A few deliberate choices keep it fast and out of your way.

  • Reading happens in Preview

    Sift opens PDFs in Preview, where macOS already handles reading and annotations well.

  • A focused catalog

    No BibTeX, RIS, or DOI export today. It could arrive later as an optional add-on.

  • Sync through your cloud folder

    No account and no push service: expect a few seconds of delay, and never a login screen. iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive — whatever you already use.