Workspace

Workspace is Gershwin’s application for managing files, folders, and applications. It is the core of the Gershwin desktop experience.

Workspace offers several viewing modes:

  • Column view: A classical multi-column browser view.

  • List view: A detailed list of files and their properties.

  • Icon view: Files shown as icons, with support for thumbnails.

Core Features

  • Desktop and Dock: Workspace provides an optional desktop with a dock for keeping track of favorites and running applications.

  • Inspector: A powerful contents inspector with image previews, extensible through plug-ins.

  • Volume Management: Easily check and unmount volumes.

  • Advanced Search: Optional database-backed search and live folders.

  • NSWorkspace implementation: Offers services to other applications for opening files and performing file operations.

Launching Applications

Applications are typically distributed as bundles and can be launched by double-clicking them in Workspace.

Networking

Network devices, such as SFTP servers, are automatically detected and can be accessed from Workspace from Go -> Network.

Windows SFTP server

To make a Windows 11 computer show up there, you need to:

  • Install the OpenSSH Server in Windows 11. To do so, run PowerShell as Administrator, then run:

Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0
Start-Service sshd
Set-Service -Name sshd -StartupType Automatic

  • Optionally if you do not have a password set for your Windows user, set PermitEmptyPasswords yes in %programdata%\ssh\sshd_config which is C:\ProgramData\ssh\sshd_config usually (need to do as an Administrator)

  • Install Bonjour for Windows. It comes with iTunes for Windows but can also be installed standalone from here (NOTE: Potentially https://support.apple.com/en-us/106380 also works instead; still to be tested.)

  • To advertise the sshd server on the network, run dns-sd -R "MyWindowsBox" _sftp-ssh._tcp local 22 on the Windows machine. This Windows Service does it automatically: https://github.com/probonopd/BonjourServiceAdvertiser

  • Disable the Windows firewall (TODO: Document how to just enable the needed ports) You should now be able to see and access the Windows 11 SFTP server from Gershwin.