What Depot does

Add as many folders as you like

Point Depot at a folder through the system dialog, and add another whenever you find one. Nothing is imported, copied, or moved.

A tree of your own structure

Nested folders open to any depth, and each one carries a count of everything inside it, subfolders included.

Two ways to see the tree

Sources keeps your root folders visible with their subfolders under them. All folders drops the roots and puts every first-level subfolder in one list.

Scanning runs in the background

Depot walks the folders you added, reads each WAV, and fills the list as it goes. Along with the metadata and waveform preview, it measures absolute Peak and RMS levels. A progress bar counts the files. Cancel it and everything read by then stays.

Rescan everything or one branch

Run it across every source, or right-click any root or subfolder to update only that branch. Either adds new WAVs and refreshes metadata without touching tags, favourites, comments, or a category you set. A branch rescan also keeps the current filter, selection, and expanded folders.

A second pass only reads what changed

A file whose size and modification time haven't changed since last time isn't opened at all, so how long a rescan takes depends on how much has changed rather than on the size of your library. The first run after an update is still a full one: the old library doesn't know when its files were last written, and that pass is where Depot learns it.

Missing files get a section of their own

A sample that's no longer on disk drops out of the list, the views, and search, and collects under Missing in the sidebar with a count of its own. Nothing is thrown away: the star, tags, category, and comment you gave it live nowhere but the library, and a collection usually goes missing because a drive is unplugged rather than for good. Plug it back in and the mark comes off by itself. The counters and the breakdown count only what's actually there.

A missing file keeps the markup it had

While a sample is away, its category, tags, star, and comment can't be changed — they describe a file that isn't there and wait for it exactly as they were. Selecting, sorting, filtering, and the inspector still work, and Remove from Library is how you drop a row for good.

You don't have to rescan to find out

Opening a folder in the tree reads it off the disk anyway, so Depot compares it with the library at the same time: files that are gone move to Missing there and then, and a folder restored with its contents reappears. Double-click a row under Missing to ask the disk about that one file — if it's back, it plays and the tree opens onto its folder.

A half-read scan marks nothing missing

If a folder refused to open or you cancelled the walk part-way, Depot draws no conclusions from it about what's gone. Either way a message afterwards says how many files went missing, how many came back, and whether anything couldn't be read.

Folder actions on right-click

Reveal a folder in Finder or Explorer, or drop it from the library and leave it on disk. Deleting the folder itself is there too: it goes to the Trash, or straight off the disk if you hold Shift.

Your audio is never written to

Depot reads your folders and keeps what it learns in a database beside them. It doesn't rename, convert, or reorganise anything.

100,000+ files without pagination

Only the rows on screen are drawn, so scrolling stays smooth on a library that size. That's what we test on.

15 columns

Category, favourite, a small waveform, name, tags, duration, size, channels, bit depth, sample rate, Peak, RMS, date added, date created, and your comment. Peak and RMS use compact dBFS values; an unmeasured level is shown as —.

Sort every data column

Every header except Waveform sorts the list; click it again to turn the order around. Text starts at A, while numbers, dates, Peak, and RMS start at the largest. Samples without measured levels stay at the end. Depot opens where you left it.

Three row heights

Compact fits the most rows and drops the waveform column; Normal and Large trade rows for room to read.

Select as many as you need

Shift+click for a range, Cmd/Ctrl+click to pick files one by one, Cmd/Ctrl+A for everything in the current list.

Right-click for the rest

Set a category or tags, reveal the file, open the system properties sheet, or drop it from the library. Deleting from disk goes to the Trash unless you hold Shift. One file or the whole selection, the same either way.

Search everything you've added, not one folder

Type and the list narrows as you go, matching filenames wherever the files sit. Several words narrow it further, a name in double quotes leaves only the files called exactly that, and a counter in the field shows what's left.

Seven filters above the list

Category, tags, duration, channels, bit depth, sample rate, and size. Stack as many as you want; Reset counts the active ones and clears them.

Match any tag or all of them

Select as many tags as you need, then choose whether a file must carry at least one of them or every one. Depot remembers the choice between sessions.

Only the values you actually have

Each filter offers what's present in front of you right now — this folder, this search — so a combination that returns nothing isn't there to pick.

Ranges for duration and size

Under a second, 1–3 s, 3–10 s, 10–30 s, over 30 s, or your own range in seconds. Size splits at 100 KB, 1 MB, and 10 MB.

Five ready-made views

All, Recently Added, Favorites, With comments, and Missing, each with a count.

A folder is a filter too

Click one in the tree and only its samples remain, subfolders included. Click it again to go back.

Find the copies you've ended up with twice

A Duplicates view searches the whole library for the same sample stored more than once, comparing the duration, size, channels, and levels Depot already measured while scanning — nothing is re-read, so it finishes in seconds. Exact copies and the same audio saved under another name are told apart; a copy re-encoded to a different format isn't counted.

Clear duplicates out folder by folder

Copies of one sample are shown together, so you can hear them before choosing. Mark the ones to drop, or mark every copy inside one folder at once and leave the copies elsewhere alone. Remove them from the library or send the files to the Trash, and optionally hand the tags, star, comment, and category to the copy you keep.

22 category icons

Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Closed Hi-hat, Open Hi-hat, Clap, Cymbal, Ride, Rim, Tom, Perc, Synth, Keys, Lead, Pad, Strings, Brass, Vocal, Bass, FX, Sequence, Loop, and Other. Each has a colour of its own, in the list and in the breakdown of your collection.

Drums categorise themselves

As it scans, Depot uses the filename and the folders nearest it to recognise confidently named kick, snare, hi-hat, clap, cymbal, ride, rim, tom, and percussion one-shots. A pack or shop name further up the path doesn't sway it. It fills only empty categories; loops, stems, effects, and ambiguous files stay uncategorised.

Set a category on any number of files

Pick it in the row itself, or select a few thousand files and set them all at once.

Any number of tags on any file

Use free-form labels for instruments, moods, projects, or anything else. They appear as chips in the list, and the inspector shows the complete set.

Set tags in batches

Add or remove tags on one file or a whole selection, and enter several at once using spaces, commas, or semicolons.

Favourites

One click on the star, or Cmd/Ctrl+D on whatever you're listening to.

A comment on any file

Type it in the inspector and it saves itself. The Comment column sorts, and With comments collects everything you've annotated.

Full-width waveform

The selected file loads into the player. Stereo draws both channels. Click anywhere on the wave to jump there. Hide the wave and the panel collapses to the transport strip without interrupting playback.

Transport

Skip to start, previous, play/pause, stop, next, loop, Play Through, and Locate — always on screen, whatever else you've hidden. Space plays and pauses from anywhere in the app.

Walk the list with the arrow keys

Up and down move through the list without reaching for the mouse. With Autoplay on, every file you land on starts playing, so you can hear a filtered selection one after another.

Play Through

Plays the visible list to the end, hands-free. The queue is the list as it's filtered and sorted right now: change either while it plays and the next file comes from the new one.

Autoplay

A setting: start playing every time the selection changes.

Locate

Scrolls the list to the file you're hearing and opens the tree onto its folder.

A wave on every row

Each row carries a thumbnail of its own waveform, drawn from peaks read during the scan.

Its own volume

Depot's volume is separate from the system one and stays where you put it.

Drag one file or a whole selection

From the list into your DAW, or into anything else that takes files from Finder or Explorer.

Your DAW decides what happens to it

Copy into the project, or reference where it lies — whichever it's set to do. The original doesn't move.

Files are checked before the drag

Anything that's no longer on disk is skipped, Depot says so, and the row moves to Missing.

Three panels, each one optional

Hide the sidebar, the waveform, or the inspector; the list takes the space they leave.

What the inspector shows

Name, duration, size, the path from the source folder down, and the full properties: Peak, RMS, sample rate, channels, bit depth, format, file size, date added, and date created.

Absolute Peak and RMS in dBFS

Peak covers every channel; RMS covers the whole file, including silence. Both are independent of the player volume. Select an older sample and the Inspector fills in missing levels once; a full rescan measures the whole existing library.

Compact mode

One button: panels away, rows at their tightest, window over everything else. Search, filters, and the whole transport stay, so a small window still plays. Its position and size are remembered on their own, and leaving it puts your panels back the way they were.

Always on top

Pin the window over your DAW without going compact.

Sized by hand

Drag the sidebar's edge or the player's top edge; double-click either to put it back.

Interface scale, 80% to 150%

Six steps that resize everything at once — text, icons, buttons, panels — from the settings panel or with Cmd/Ctrl and +, −, or 0. It isn't row height: density decides how many rows fit, scale decides how large it all is. The window grows with the interface, so the list still shows as much as before, and a toolbar that runs out of room folds its panel switches and the search field into one button instead of cutting them off.

Dark, light, or whatever the system is doing

Hints that say why a control is there

Hover one of the main controls and a plaque explains what it's for and when you'd reach for it, not what it's called. On by default; switch them off and the plain system tooltips are still there.

It opens the way you left it

Panel widths and visibility, row height, interface scale, sort column, tree mode, and always-on-top all come back with the app. The first time, before you've added a folder, the waveform and inspector stay hidden until there's a sample to fill them.

Three counters in the status bar

Total for the collection and Filtered for what the filters left — files, size, and total duration each. Selected shows how many you've picked and how much they weigh. All three count the samples that are actually on disk.

The breakdown behind Total

Click it for how the collection splits by duration, bit depth, channels, sample rate, and file size — a bar and a count for each. A second tab does the same for your categories, and counts what you haven't marked yet.

Every row of the breakdown is a filter

Click one to see only those files, Shift+click to add another, click again to drop it.

The path of what you're playing

Along the status bar, shortened from the left so the filename is always readable.

WAV only

8, 16, 24, and 32-bit. MP3, AIFF, and FLAC aren't read. Why WAV only

macOS and Windows

Apple Silicon and x86-64. No Linux build.

No editing

Nothing is normalised, converted, or trimmed. That's your DAW's job.

Nothing leaves your machine

No account, no sync, no cloud, and no network code in the app at all.

Not there yet

BPM detection and key detection aren't in the app. See the roadmap