Continuo moves files between Macs over an encrypted bulk channel isolated from keyboard and mouse traffic. Received files are verified, quarantined, and kept inside a folder you control. Free covers one file at a time; Pro adds folders and batches. See Free vs Pro.
There are two ways to send a copy: drag the file across the screen edge and drop it where it belongs on the other Mac, or drop it on the notch zone and pick the Mac from a list. Both are described below.
This page is about sending a copy to another Mac. To leave a folder where it is and open it from another Mac instead, see Quick Share.
Drag across screens
With Drag files across screens enabled (Settings → Sharing), pick a file up in Finder and drag it at a shared edge, the same edge you would cross with the cursor. The drag carries on over there: the cursor arrives on the other Mac’s screen still holding the file, and you finish the same gesture on that screen.
Drop it on any app on that Mac that accepts a file, not only on Continuo. A Finder window or the Desktop, a Mail compose window, a browser upload field, an app icon in the Dock: the receiving app is handed a file the way it would be handed one that had been sitting on that Mac all along.
A few things that follow from that:
- The transfer starts at the edge, not at the drop. Bytes move while the drag is still going, so a small file has already arrived by the time you let go, and a large one is read at the rate it arrives.
- It is a copy. The original stays where it was on the sending Mac.
- Drag back to cancel. Cross back over the edge before releasing the mouse and nothing is delivered. The half-transferred copy on the other Mac is discarded.
- The file lands where you dropped it. A drop on the Desktop leaves the file on the Desktop; a drop on a Mail compose window leaves it as an attachment on that message. A crossed drop does not also leave a copy in the receive folder.
Notch drop zone
On supported Macs, a drop zone appears at the notch (or as a floating pill on non-notched displays) while you drag a supported item. Start dragging in Finder, move toward the notch, and drop on one paired Mac or All to send to every paired peer.
Toggle the zone under Settings → Sharing → Show notch drop zone.
Text and links dropped through the notch use a separate control channel with a 256 KB payload cap and up to 16 links per drop.
Which one to use
The notch zone is a chooser. You stay on your own screen, name the destination from a list, and the file arrives in the receive folder on the Mac you picked. It is the only one of the two that can send to All paired Macs at once, and it works whether or not that Mac’s screen is next to yours.
The cross-screen drag is placement. You go to the other Mac’s screen yourself and put the file in a specific window, field or app, and it lands only there. It needs a shared edge with the Mac you are sending to.
Where files land
Default receive folder: ~/Continuo in your home directory.
Continuo uses this folder instead of Downloads so macOS does not prompt for extra file-access permission on every receive. Change the path under Settings → Sharing → Receive folder.
A file dropped across the screen edge onto another app is the exception: it goes to whatever the receiving app did with it, and the receive folder is left alone.
After a file arrives
Under Sharing you can configure Auto-accept files (receive without a prompt each time), Notify on receive, Reveal received items in Finder after a notch drop, and Open received links for link drops.
Quarantine and verification
Anything Continuo writes to the receive folder stays inside it; path escape
attempts are refused. Every received file, however it was sent, gets macOS
quarantine metadata (com.apple.quarantine) and is checked with SHA-256;
mismatches are discarded.
Size limits
Drag and notch file transfers are limited by available disk space, not a fixed Continuo cap. Clipboard-origin bulk receives are capped at 32 MB on the receiver.
For the security model in depth, read the Security whitepaper.