Ordina — Tutorials

1 First Launch & Full Disk Access

What you'll learn: completing the one-time setup so Ordina can index your files.

Ordina indexes file metadata — names, sizes, dates, types, and locations — not file content. To do this across your Mac, it needs Full Disk Access.

Steps

1. Launch Ordina. If Full Disk Access has not been granted, a prompt appears explaining what it is and why it's needed.
2. Click "Open Privacy Settings." macOS opens System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.
3. Find Ordina in the list and toggle it on. macOS may ask for your password.
4. Return to Ordina. The app detects the permission automatically — no restart needed.
5. The Welcome screen is shown on first launch. It gives a brief overview of how Ordina works: drives are indexed into a local database, and all searching happens against that database — fast, private, offline.

2 Adding a Local or External Drive

What you'll learn: adding your Mac's internal drive or an external drive to Ordina's index.

Adding a drive

1. In the left sidebar, click the + button at the bottom of the Drives section, or use the toolbar's Add Drive button.
2. Ordina scans for available volumes. Your internal Mac drive and any connected external drives appear in the list.
3. Select the drive you want to add and click Add.
4. Ordina imports the drive's metadata. A progress bar appears showing the import status — file count and estimated time remaining. Large drives (500,000+ files) may take a few minutes on first import.
5. When the import is complete, the drive appears in the left sidebar with a file count. You can now search it.

Re-scanning a drive

Ordina's index reflects the state of the drive at the time of the last import. To update the index after adding, deleting, or moving files:

1. Right-click the drive in the left sidebar.
2. Select Re-scan Drive. The import runs again, updating only what has changed.

Removing a drive

1. Right-click the drive in the left sidebar.
2. Select Remove Drive. The drive and all its indexed data are removed from the database. The actual files on your drive are untouched.

3 Connecting Cloud Storage

What you'll learn: adding iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive to your Ordina index.

Ordina supports four cloud storage services. Cloud files are indexed just like local files — you can search them, see their metadata, and open their detail panel. For Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, Ordina can also show a live thumbnail preview of the file using the provider's API.

iCloud Drive

1. In the Drives sidebar, click + and select iCloud Drive.
2. An Open dialog appears. Navigate to your iCloud Drive folder (it is usually inside your Home folder under iCloud Drive). Click Allow.
3. Ordina stores a security-scoped bookmark so it can access iCloud Drive without prompting you again. Import begins immediately.

Dropbox

1. In the Drives sidebar, click + and select Dropbox.
2. Click Connect Dropbox. Ordina opens a browser window to the Dropbox OAuth login page.
3. Sign in to your Dropbox account and grant Ordina read-only access. You are redirected back to Ordina automatically.
4. Ordina fetches your Dropbox file list and imports metadata. Thumbnail previews are available in the detail panel for supported file types.

Google Drive

1. In the Drives sidebar, click + and select Google Drive.
2. Click Connect Google Drive. A browser window opens for Google OAuth.
3. Sign in and grant Ordina read-only Drive access. You are redirected back to Ordina.
4. Ordina indexes your Google Drive files. Thumbnail previews are fetched via the Drive API for supported files.

OneDrive

1. In the Drives sidebar, click + and select OneDrive.
2. Click Connect OneDrive. Microsoft OAuth opens in a browser.
3. Sign in with your Microsoft account and grant Ordina read-only Files access. You are redirected back.
4. Ordina imports your OneDrive file list. Large preview thumbnails are available via the Graph API.

4 Searching Your Files

What you'll learn: running searches, filtering by drive, and understanding search results.

Basic search

1. Click the Search tab in the toolbar (magnifying glass icon).
2. Type in the search bar at the top of the main area. Results update as you type — no need to press ↩.
3. Results show file name, type, size, last modified date, and the drive it lives on.

Filtering by drive

1. Click any drive in the left sidebar to restrict results to that drive only.
2. Click All Drives at the top of the sidebar to search across every indexed drive simultaneously.

Sorting results

Click any column header in the results list to sort by that column. Click again to reverse the sort order. Useful columns for finding things quickly:

• Date Modified — find recently changed files
• Size — find the largest files consuming space
• Name — alphabetical browse
• Type — group files by extension

Opening a file

1. Double-click any result to open it in its default application.
2. Right-click for more options: Open, Reveal in Finder, Copy Path, Move to Trash.

Multi-select

1. Click a file to select it. ⌘-click to add individual files to the selection. ⇧-click to select a range.
2. With multiple files selected, the right panel shows a summary (count, total size). Right-clicking shows batch operations.

5 Smart Filters

What you'll learn: using built-in filters and creating custom filters to find specific file types and sets.

Smart Filters let you instantly surface every file matching a specific condition — all PDFs across all drives, all images, all Word documents — without typing a search query. Filter results update automatically when drives are re-scanned.

Using built-in filters

1. In the left sidebar, scroll down to the Filters section.
2. Click any built-in filter to apply it instantly:

Creating a custom filter

1. In the Filters section of the sidebar, click the + button.
2. The Custom Filter editor opens. Give your filter a name.
3. Add one or more conditions. Conditions can match on: file name, file extension, size (greater/less than), date modified (before/after), drive, or a combination.
4. Click Save. Your filter appears in the sidebar alongside the built-in filters.
5. Click the filter to run it at any time. Results are always live against the current index.

6 Finding Duplicates

What you'll learn: using the Duplicates tab to identify and remove exact duplicate files to reclaim storage space.

Running a duplicate scan

1. Click the Duplicates tab in the toolbar (two overlapping documents icon).
2. If no scan has been run, click Find Duplicates. Ordina compares files across all indexed drives using file size and content hash — only exact byte-for-byte duplicates are matched.
3. Results are grouped by confidence level using sub-tabs: 100% (exact hash match), and lower confidence tiers for near-matches. Start with the 100% tab for safe deletions.

Reviewing duplicate groups

1. Each duplicate group shows all copies of a file: their name, size, location, and last modified date.
2. Click a file in the group to see its detail panel on the right — confirm it is actually the file you think it is before deleting.
3. Ordina does not automatically choose which copy to keep. You decide. A common strategy: keep the copy on your main drive and delete the one on an external or cloud backup drive.

Deleting a duplicate

1. Select the copy you want to remove.
2. Right-click and choose Move to Trash. The file moves to the macOS Trash — it is not permanently deleted until you empty the Trash.
3. The duplicate group updates after deletion. If only one copy remains, the group disappears.

Exporting the duplicate report

1. With the Duplicates tab active, click the Export button in the toolbar.
2. A CSV file is saved listing every duplicate group, file paths, sizes, and modification dates. Useful for reviewing a large set of duplicates before deciding what to delete.

7 Storage Statistics

What you'll learn: using the Statistics tab to understand what is consuming space across your drives.

1. Click the Statistics tab in the toolbar (bar chart icon).
2. Ordina shows a breakdown of storage usage across all indexed drives. Key views:

By file type

A chart shows how your storage is divided by file category — Videos, Images, Documents, Audio, Archives, and Other. Hover over any segment for the exact size and file count.

By drive

A per-drive breakdown shows total size, used space, available space, and the percentage consumed by indexed files.

Largest files

A sortable list of the largest individual files across all drives. Click any file to jump to its result and open its detail panel. This is the fastest way to find space-consuming files you may have forgotten about.

Largest folders

Shows the top folders by total content size. Useful for finding old project folders, application caches, or archive directories that are consuming significant space.

8 Tags

What you'll learn: tagging files in Ordina and browsing by tag across all your drives.

Ordina has its own tag system for labelling files with custom name-based tags. Tags live in the right-hand detail panel and are stored in the Ordina database — they are separate from macOS Finder colour labels.

1. Click any file to open its detail panel on the right.
2. In the detail panel, find the Tags field. Type a tag name and press Return to add it to the file.
3. Add as many tags as you like — for example "to review", "archived", "client: Acme".
4. To find all files with a given tag, use the Search tab and include the tag name in your query. Tagged files are returned alongside other matching results.

9 Ordina Agent (AI Search)

What you'll learn: using natural-language queries to search your files without needing to know exact filenames or extensions.

The Ordina Agent translates natural-language questions into structured file searches. Instead of remembering that a file was called "Q3_report_final_v2.docx", you can ask "find Word documents from last quarter" and Ordina figures out the rest.

Opening the Agent panel

1. Click the sparkles (✦) button in the toolbar to open the AI Assistant panel on the right side.

Natural-language search

1. Type a query in plain English. Examples:

• "PDFs modified in the last two weeks"
• "Large video files on my external drive"
• "Images created this year"
• "Word documents bigger than 10 MB"
• "Files I haven't opened in more than a year"

2. The Agent parses your query and builds a filter. A preview of the interpreted filter appears below your query — confirming what Ordina understood.
3. Click Run Search (or press ↩). Results appear in the main search view.
4. If the results are not what you expected, refine your query. The Agent shows its interpretation so you can see exactly how it understood your request and adjust accordingly.

Context-aware features

The Agent also offers suggestions based on what you're currently doing:

• In the Search tab with results visible — the Agent can suggest related searches or refine the current query.
• In the Duplicates tab — the Agent can help identify which duplicate copies are safest to remove based on location and date.
• In the Statistics tab — the Agent can explain unusually large categories and suggest what to look at first.

10 File Detail Panel

What you'll learn: using the right-hand detail panel to inspect a file before opening it.

1. Click any file in the search results, filter results, duplicates list, or tag browser. The detail panel opens on the right.

What the detail panel shows

• File name and path — full location on the drive.
• Preview — a thumbnail or inline preview for supported types: images, PDFs, fonts (glyph preview), and common document formats.
• Metadata — file size, creation date, last modified date, file type, and UTI (Universal Type Identifier).
• Cloud status (for cloud files) — whether the file is downloaded locally or stored only in the cloud.
• Tags — custom name-based tags you have applied to this file in Ordina.

Actions from the detail panel

• Open — opens the file in its default application.
• Reveal in Finder — opens a Finder window with the file selected.
• Open in Ordina Browser (cloud files only) — opens the file's web URL in the in-app Ordina Browser window.
• Open in Cloud (cloud files only) — opens the file in your default browser.
• Copy Path — copies the full file path to the clipboard.

11 Settings Reference

A complete guide to every setting in Ordina.

Settings has five tabs: Scanning, Appearance, Advanced, Agent, and About.

Scanning

• Full Disk Access status — shows whether FDA is granted. A button opens System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access if it needs to be enabled.
• Index hidden files — include files and folders beginning with a dot (.) in the index. Off by default.
• Maximum file depth — how many folder levels deep Ordina descends when indexing.
• Cloud Accounts — connect and manage iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Disconnect removes credentials and deletes indexed cloud data; Re-authenticate refreshes an expired token without losing data.

Appearance

• Color theme — choose from named themes (Slate, Forest, Ember, Ocean, and more). Each theme changes the accent and sidebar colors throughout the interface.

Advanced

• Database storage location, cache management, and diagnostic options for power users.

Agent

• Configure the OrdinaAgent background helper, which indexes drives on remote Macs and makes them available over your local network. Set the agent's listening port and manage discovered remote agents.

About

• App version, Pro licence status, and links to the DataIsland website and support.