Support

macOS 14.6 or later. Folder icons - the SF Symbol shown on a folder in Finder - need macOS 26; everything else works on 14.6.

Press ⌘N, or click the + beside Templates in the sidebar. A new template arrives with one folder named {{project_name}} and that placeholder already defined. Build the rest on the Structure tab. There is a five-minute walkthrough in Your first template.

Yes. Drag the folder onto the Prefab window or its Dock icon, or use File ▸ Import Folder…. You choose how much comes across: folders and file contents, folders only, or folders with empty files in place of the real ones. Nothing is moved or changed in the folder you imported.

Anything written between double braces - {{client_name}} - in a folder name, a file name, or a file’s contents. Prefab asks for the value as it deploys and fills it in everywhere at once. Define them on the Placeholders tab; a placeholder nobody defines is created literally. {{date}}, {{year}}, {{author}} and {{folder}} fill themselves in without asking.

Four ways: Create… in the app, the menu bar item, Finder’s right-click menu (New Folder(s) from Template), or a prefab:// link from Terminal, Shortcuts or a script. Whichever you use, Prefab asks for any values the template needs and builds the folders where you pointed it.

Yes - actions on the Automation tab: initialise a git repository, open the folder in your editor, reveal it in Finder, or run a command of your own. Terminal commands need one setup step: install the shell runner from Settings ▸ Permissions. Until you do, no command runs.

That is what watched folders do. Attach a rule to a folder in the template and set it to Watch the folder, and files that land there later are renamed, converted, resized, tagged or sorted into subfolders - using the same answers the folder was created with. Preview it before applying to files already there, and undo a run from the menu bar. Prefab has to be running for it to happen.

Yes, on the Globals screen: placeholders, actions and saved sets of answers defined once and available to every template. A template’s own definitions still take priority over a global with the same key.

Export it as a .prefab file. It carries the files the template deploys and any templates it embeds, so double-clicking it on another Mac adds the lot.

Yes. Colours are real Finder tags, so they behave the way tags do everywhere else on your Mac, and folders can carry an SF Symbol icon on macOS 26. Both are applied as the folder is created.

macOS keeps extensions switched off until you turn them on, and no app is allowed to do it for you. Open Settings ▸ General in Prefab and click the button that opens the Finder Extensions list, then tick Prefab. If it still does not appear, log out and back in - Finder picks up new extensions when it restarts.

Check Settings ▸ Permissions: the shell runner has a version, and older versions cannot report whether a command succeeded. Use the button there to install, update or reinstall it, then use Test to confirm. Commands time out after five minutes by default.

Prefab is sandboxed and can only reach folders you have given it. Granting a folder covers everything inside it, and the grants are listed under Settings ▸ Permissions where you can remove any of them.

No. It ships without the network entitlement, so it cannot send anything anywhere even in principle. Templates, settings and the folders you grant access to stay on your Mac. The privacy policy is the long version.

Email me at contact@davidkel.ly. Say which version you are on - it is at the top of Settings ▸ About - and what you expected to happen. The roadmap shows what is already planned.