Filegen Help Center

No. Filegen is a one-time purchase. No recurring fees, no subscription. Buy once and use it forever.

The free version is not a trial — it has no time limit and no file-count limit. Plain Text, Markdown, CSV, and JSON templates, the Finder service, the global hotkey, and unlimited file creation are free forever. A one-time purchase unlocks Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, Swift, and Python templates, custom templates made from your own files, and the {date} filename variable.

The service has to be enabled once in System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts… › Services › Files and Folders. It then appears inline at the bottom of the folder context menu — not inside a Services submenu. It is shown for folders only, not for files or empty space. Filegen’s first-launch guide also links straight to the right settings pane.

No. The global hotkey works without Accessibility access, and Filegen does not ask for Full Disk Access. The direct edition uses Finder automation to determine the target folder for the hotkey, so macOS may ask you to allow it to control Finder.

Filegen Pro is a one-time purchase of $4.99, with no subscription. It is available on the Mac App Store (tied to your Apple ID, with Family Sharing) and directly from novetool.com via Creem (one license key for up to 3 Macs). Both unlock the same Pro features.

Open the unlock panel in Filegen and click Restore Purchase. It re-checks the entitlement for the Apple ID signed in to the App Store. Direct license keys are not restored through Apple — email [email protected] with your key or order number.

Filegen requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later. It is a Universal binary that runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

No. Filegen is a menu bar app — no Dock icon and no Cmd-Tab entry. It starts silently and stays resident in the menu bar while it is running so the global shortcut works; the main window only appears when you ask for it. Launch at login is optional and can be toggled from the menu bar at any time.

Existing files are never overwritten. Filegen appends (1), (2), and so on before the extension — Untitled.txt becomes Untitled (1).txt. Collision checks are Unicode-normalized and case-insensitive, matching what macOS itself rejects. An empty filename field falls back to Untitled.

The same file can be created in several folders at once: select multiple folders in Finder and run New File with Filegen, and the chosen template is written into every selected folder in a single pass. Filegen creates one file per invocation — there is no batch creation of several different templates.

No. Version 1.0 uses the fixed ⌃⌥⌘N combination, and there is no shortcut customisation. If another app already owns the shortcut, Filegen shows a “Hotkey unavailable” warning in the main window instead of failing silently.

The interface is English-only in version 1.0. Date-based filenames still follow your Mac’s regional settings for month and day order.

Free: Plain Text (.txt), Markdown (.md), CSV (.csv), and JSON (.json, pre-filled with an empty object). Pro: Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), and PowerPoint (.pptx) as real minimal Office Open XML files, an HTML5 skeleton, a Swift source file with import Foundation, and a Python script with a shebang line.

With Pro, you can put {date} in the filename and it expands to today’s date, using your system locale’s component order with hyphens as separators. Unknown placeholders are left untouched, so literal braces survive. If the resulting name is taken, Filegen adds a numbered suffix instead of overwriting.

No. Files are created entirely on your Mac, and Filegen never reads, uploads, or collects their contents. The Mac App Store edition makes no network requests at all beyond Apple’s StoreKit. The direct edition only contacts Creem for license activation and novetool.com for update checks.

The Pro features are identical. The App Store version is sandboxed, uses StoreKit and supports Family Sharing; it asks you to choose a target folder the first time you use the hotkey and remembers it. The Direct version is not sandboxed, can create files in any folder, uses Finder automation for the hotkey, and activates a license key online on up to 3 Macs.

Direct purchases via Creem are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. If Filegen does not work for you, contact us within 30 days for a full refund. App Store purchases are handled by Apple under Apple’s refund policy.