Drag and Drop Linking: Many Items at a Time

Elsewhere, we explained how to link two items by dropping one item at a time on the menu bar icon. You can also:

  1. Drop one item followed by multiple items. This links the first single item to the second set of items. See the next section.
  2. Drag and drop several items onto the menu bar icon to link them all to each other in one operation. See full mesh linking below.

Watch how easy it is to “hook” items together by dragging and dropping them onto Hookmark’s menu bar icon:

(The video above is repeated on the 3 menu bar window help pages.)

restrictions

Currently, only Finder supports dropping multiple items onto the menu bar icon or menu bar window. You can’t drop multiple items from other apps in the menu bar window.

Only some apps support dropping on menu bar window at all. These include Finder, most web browsers, Apple Mail, AirMail, Mailmate, OmniFocus, and some other apps that are automated with AppleScript.

One-to-many (hub-and-spoke) linking

Here is how to link one item to several files. It could not be easier!

  1. Drag any linkable item onto the Hookmark menu bar icon. The drop zone will split into two, revealing a new drop zone.
  2. Select multiple files and drag them all together to — and drop them on — the Hookmark menu bar icon; or you can drop them in the second drop zone. (If you drop them at the top, this will replace the items in the top drop zone and link them all together, per fully meshed-linking below).

And presto! The two files are now linked! You’ll get a notification to this effect, which you can turn off in macOS System Preferences > Notifications.

Now, the next time you invoke the Hookmark window (using ⌘⇧spacebar) on one file, you will see the other file. So you can instantly navigate between them.

Note that the first item can be of any linkable type, but in one-to-many linking the second set of items can only be files. (We expect to remove this restriction).

This works not only with files, it also works with most linkable items. For example:

  1. Drag a web address from Safari (or almost any other browser) and drop it onto the menu bar icon.
  2. Drag an email message from Mail, MailMate or Airmail and drop it onto the menu bar icon.

Again, presto, the web page and mail message are linked.

Now, the next time you invoke the Hookmark window (using ⌘⇧spacebar) on one file, you will see the other file. So you can instantly navigate between them.

Again, it could not be easier!

Fully meshed linking

If you want to link two or more files or folders to each other, simply select them in the Finder and drag & drop them onto Hookmark’s menu bar icon. This will link them all in one step.

Whereas other forms of linking in Hookmark works with any linkable items, fully meshed linking currently only works with files. (We intend to remove this restriction. However, this is very likely to be sufficient for the vast majority of mesh linking needs.)