Route captured items deliberately
Move items from an inbox into a project, research area, or another inbox from a dedicated triage screen on both platforms.
Feature tour
Actium features
A personal document-management system for Mac, iPhone, and iPad: real folders, readable metadata, rich previews, local AI, portable catalogues, Finder links, and a read-only MCP server for asking AI about your own library. Sync runs on your own iCloud Drive, not a service Actium operates. It is built for people who would rather keep choosing their own tools than move every workflow into one monolithic app.
Repositories
Preview
Inspector
Own your files
Actium indexes your folders instead of swallowing them.
Any folder can become a repository. Actium tracks the real files in place and writes portable metadata sidecars beside them, so the library remains understandable even outside the app. Put a repository in iCloud Drive and the files and their sidecars sync across your devices with everything else there; keep it local and it stays on one Mac.
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Repositories
Register folders from iCloud Drive or another location without copying everything into an app-owned store.
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Inbox, projects, and research areas
Give folders a working role without forcing your whole archive into a rigid hierarchy.
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Readable sidecars
Custom fields, IDs, and other metadata are stored in plain JSON files. Annotations are real Markdown, Rich Text, or Plain Text files.
Capture and organize
Triage, enrich, and route documents with more context than Finder alone can hold.
Define your own metadata
Use repository-specific fields for text, number, boolean, date, and other values. Field editing works on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Move matching items on demand
On macOS, create rules against the same custom-field system and run them against an inbox when you are ready.
Inbox queue
Destination
Local-first AI
Semantic help without a cloud AI backend.
Actium can use a local Ollama model on the Mac for meaning-aware classification, semantic catalogues, and graph exploration. iPhone and iPad can queue AI work for a registered Mac to complete.
The recommended starter models and pull commands are listed on the Ollama setup page.
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Auto-File suggestions
Choose classic text similarity or embedding-vector similarity to suggest where a document belongs.
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Semantic Catalogue
Generate concept graphs that summarize repository content and relationships between documents.
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Visual Graph
An experimental macOS graph view explores related items with pan, zoom, drag, live growth, and jump-back navigation.
Concept graph
Related items
Catalogues
Carry the index of a drive that lives at home in your pocket.
A Catalogue is a standalone `.actiumcatalog` index of a folder or drive. Scan an external disk or an archive once, and you can browse its full contents as cards, a list, or a navigable hierarchy on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, long after the disk itself is unplugged.
Find something you need while you are out? Request it from the catalogue. Next time the source Mac is running it copies that file into a repository for you, and if the repository is in iCloud Drive, the file lands on the device you asked from.
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Offline browsing, everywhere
Keep a searchable view of archival drives, network shares, and media that cannot stay attached. The same catalogue opens on all three platforms.
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Fetch a file from your phone
Request any item from a catalogue on iPhone or iPad. A registered Mac fulfills it from the real source and copies it into a synced repository, so it comes back to you without a cable or a screen-sharing session.
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Safe, optional automation
Turn on automatic fulfillment and future requests resolve themselves, after checking free space and handling name collisions, never overwriting silently.
Catalogue tree
Copy request
Finder, links, and AI clients
Actium reaches outside the app without making your library less portable.
Work from Finder
Right-click files or folders to inspect Actium metadata, copy a durable item link, or register an untracked item.
Reference files from anywhere
Open, reveal, or verify an item from notes, chat, other apps, and catalogue entries using durable links.
Ask AI about your own library
The macOS app can expose a read-only local MCP server so compatible AI clients can search, browse, and read your indexed documents.
Finder action
AI query
Reliability and durability
Built for a library you will still be opening in ten years.
Broad previews, versioned metadata, health checks, iCloud-aware file handling, and visible progress for background work. The unglamorous parts that decide whether a personal library survives a decade of use.
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Rich previews
Preview PDF, images, Markdown tables, Rich Text, JSON, plain text, and `.eml` email with inline images.
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Health and durability
Versioned metadata, upgrade-on-read migration, conflict detection, protected document handling, and iCloud download awareness keep the library safer.
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iCloud-aware handling
Actium knows when a file is still in the cloud, waits for what it needs, and does not mistake a not-yet-downloaded item for a missing one.
Coming from DEVONthink?
Actium can read a DEVONthink files-and-folders export and bring across its tags, comments, URLs, and custom fields as an on-ramp. The import guide covers what carries over and what does not.
Platform availability
One data model, different strengths on each device.
The devices share a data model, not a database. iCloud Drive moves the files and their sidecar metadata between them, under your Apple ID, with iCloud's own encryption and privacy. There is no Actium sync service in the middle. The sync explainer covers how it holds together and why it is built that way.
| Feature | Actium Desktop for macOS | Actium for iOS/iPadOS |
|---|---|---|
| Browse repositories, folders, and previews | Yes | Yes |
| Inbox triage, annotations, and custom field values | Yes | Yes |
| Custom field schema creation | Yes | No |
| Continuous background watching | Yes, through FSEvents | Foreground scans and polling |
| Auto-File suggestions, Inbox Rules, Semantic Catalogue, Visual Graph | Yes | No |
| Request AI processing | Runs locally via Ollama | Submits requests for a Mac to fulfill |
| Catalogues | Create, scan, browse, and request copy | Browse and request copy |
| Finder Quick Action, files-and-folders import, MCP server, Health view | Yes | No or not applicable |
| Client Experience Platform gateway | Yes | Yes |
Known boundaries: Inbox Rules run on demand, smart groups carried in an imported export are shown but not re-evaluated, and Actium is positioned as a single-user own-your-files product rather than a team collaboration platform.