Help
Short answers to what you'll actually run into. If something's missing, email support@modelist.app and I'll add it.
Download the build for your operating system from the Download section: macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel/Universal .dmg), Windows (x64 Setup.exe), or Linux (x86_64 AppImage / .deb). ARM builds for Windows and Linux are published with releases when supported.
The free version has every feature unlocked but is capped at 100 files. No time limit. The intent is for you to point Modelist at your real folders and confirm it actually works for your library before paying.
Modelist is available in English, German, Spanish, and French, and follows your system language on first run - if your computer is set to German, Modelist opens in German. To choose a different one, Settings → General → Language switches the whole interface, and your choice is remembered across restarts.
A strip in the status bar shows a tip relevant to the screen you are on, and expands into a drawer for the detail. Every tip stays readable in Settings & Tools → Tips & Tricks, including ones you have dismissed.
On first launch Modelist asks you to add a watched folder. Pick the folder where most of your STL/3MF/OBJ/STEP/SCAD files live. Modelist scans in the background, generating previews and pulling out embedded thumbnails from 3MFs. You can keep using the app while the scan runs.
Add folders for Modelist to watch from the sidebar (drag a folder from Finder/Explorer onto the watched-folders area, or use the + button). Modelist indexes everything inside, including subfolders. You can add as many watched folders as you want and reorder them by dragging.
STL, 3MF, OBJ, STEP, and OpenSCAD (.scad) files. Archive packages are also indexed - ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 - Modelist reads the contents without you having to extract them yourself. Archives appear as locked groups in your library. There are size ceilings on what gets rendered and what gets scanned so a single enormous file can't stall a scan, and both are configurable in Settings → General.
Modelist syncs automatically when the app starts and detects new files in watched folders during normal use. You can also trigger a manual rescan from the toolbar at any time. We avoid live filesystem watchers because they tend to thrash with network drives and large libraries.
Most of the time Modelist works out where a file came from on its own, finds the model page, and pulls in the images, description, and metadata, with a link back to the original. For anything it can't place, paste a Makerworld, Printables, or Thingiverse URL into the file's details and it fetches the same information. Source detection is controlled by Settings → General → Extract download URLs.
.scad files are indexed, searchable, taggable, and collectable like any other model, in watched folders and inside archives, with a SCAD badge in the file list. Rendered thumbnails need OpenSCAD itself installed: without it they are still indexed and Modelist tells you they are waiting and points you at the download, then renders them once you set the path - no rescan needed. Because OpenSCAD draws with its own colour schemes rather than one colour, .scad thumbnails have their own picker in Settings → General with a regenerate button that touches only .scad files. Edit a .scad and its thumbnail is redrawn on the next scan. Opening one launches OpenSCAD rather than your slicer, which cannot read the format.
If the auto-generated preview isn't what you want, use your own image instead. Drop an image next to the model on disk with the same name (dragon.stl, dragon.png) and Modelist picks it up as that file's thumbnail; an image next to a ZIP becomes the cover for the whole group. You can also pick one by hand, including one of the member renders for a group. The model still renders in the background, but your image stays the one on the card, and a sidecar added long after the first scan is detected when you open the file.
Settings → General → Display Settings is where appearance options live: dark mode toggle (Modelist remembers your choice across launches), scrollbar visibility, max cards shown at once (default 505 - higher values are smoother but use more memory), and the default Banderole text used for newly-discovered files.
Settings → General → Model Settings lets you pick the colour Modelist uses to render 3D previews - so STLs don't all look like the same blue blob. After changing it, click "Regenerate all thumbnails with new colour" to apply across your existing library.
3MF projects open in the viewer in the colours they will print in: the filament palette is read from the project and each part is shown in the filament assigned to it, painted regions like logos and engraved symbols included. Projects with several plates can be stepped through a plate at a time rather than showing everything at once.
If a file fails to render a preview, Modelist marks it unrenderable after a few attempts (otherwise it'd retry forever). Settings → Unrenderable shows the count and lets you reset the status to retry - useful after an update or after fixing whatever caused the failure.
Modelist gives you three layers of organization on top of your folder structure: tags, collections, and groups. None of them move or rename your files - they're metadata Modelist tracks about your library.
Custom labels you can attach to any file. Create them as you go. Tags work well for cross-cutting attributes like "Print Ready", "Articulated", or "Gifts" - things that don't fit a folder hierarchy.
Settings → Tags is the central place to rename, delete, or reorganize tags across your whole library at once. Useful when you've accumulated near-duplicates ("Print Ready" vs "print-ready" vs "PrintReady") and want to consolidate.
Named groupings that exist only inside Modelist. Drag a file onto a collection in the sidebar to add it. A file can live in multiple collections at once. Collections are great for projects, print queues, gifts for specific people - anything that doesn't map to a folder.
Collections can contain other collections. Faction → Unit → Variant works fine. Use the Move Collection picker to reparent existing collections.
Save a search and Modelist keeps the result current as your library grows. Examples: "All Bambu files I haven't tagged yet", "STLs over 50MB", "Things marked To Print". They're live, not snapshots - new matching files appear automatically.
Manually cluster related files - parts of a multi-piece print, variants of the same model, accessories that go together. Give the group a name and a custom thumbnail. Whole groups can be bulk-added to a collection or multi-selected for tagging and other actions.
A customizable status flag attached to each file. Set the values you actually use - "To Print", "Review", "In progress", whatever fits your workflow. The default text Modelist applies to newly-discovered files is configurable in Settings → General (default is "NEW FILE"). To reset every file's banderole at once, use the Clear Banderole option in Settings.
Per-file freeform notes. Print settings that worked, where you found the file, license terms, what went wrong last time - whatever you want to remember. Notes are searchable.
Select multiple files (or whole groups) and everything that acts on the selection lives in one Actions menu: tag, add to collections, set or clear a banderole, re-render thumbnails, or delete. Selecting a group applies the action to every file inside it. Multi-select works the way you'd expect: click + shift-click for range, cmd/ctrl-click for individual.
For tracking the physical side of your printing setup.
Settings → Printers lists the 3D printers you own. Add them by name (e.g. "Bambu Lab P2S", "A1", "H2D"), or let them arrive on their own: printers named in your slicer files are picked up when those files are scanned. Useful for filtering files by which printer to use, or tracking what's been printed where.
Settings → Materials is the list of materials your library refers to. Most entries arrive from your slicer files, and you can add your own. Because slicers name the same filament several ways, each entry can hold aliases, so "Bambu PLA Basic" and "PLA Basic Bambu" resolve to one material instead of splitting your filters in two.
Every file has a Print tab holding the printer it was sliced for, the material or materials it uses, and the total print weight. Modelist fills this in from 3MF files written by Bambu Studio, Orca Slicer, PrusaSlicer, and SuperSlicer, including 3MFs inside ZIPs. Prints using several materials show a per-material breakdown of the weight. Each field remembers whether it came from the file or from you, so a re-scan never overwrites something you set by hand.
When a scan turns up a printer, material, or colour that isn't in your library yet, it goes to a review queue rather than being guessed at. A popup and badges in the sidebar tell you how many are waiting. Review them in one modal with a tab each for printers, materials, and colours, mapping each one to something you already have or adding it as new.
Settings → Colours is your colour library. Colours get added automatically when 3MFs are imported, or add them manually. Drag colours into named groups (Reds, Blues, Whites, etc.) for quick filtering. Once you've seeded a few colours per group, click Auto-assign to sort the rest based on hex values.
Search runs locally - nothing leaves your computer. Results update as you type. Modelist searches across filename, source description, your notes, your tags, and metadata. When viewing a collection, search is scoped to that collection only.
Beyond text search, you can filter by file format, size range, date, tags, source platform, banderole status, and whether a file is in a collection or not. Save any filter combination as a Smart Collection.
Toggle fuzzy matching when you can't quite remember what the file was called. Modelist forgives a typo or two.
Modelist runs several duplicate-finding methods together:
When the last scan matched a file against others, a Duplicates tab appears on that file's detail page, so you can deal with a duplicate while looking at the file itself rather than only inside the batch tool. The tab is absent when there is nothing to show, and it respects any "Keep All" dismissals you have made.
Settings → Duplicate Finder is the dedicated UI for working through detected duplicates. It walks you through every set Modelist found and lets you decide which to keep, which to delete, and which to leave alone. Scans keep running in the background, so you can carry on working and come back to the results; on very large libraries results are capped per category with a prompt to narrow things down.
Modelist doesn't favor any particular slicer. By default it opens files with whatever your OS has registered as the default app for that extension - STLs open in your default STL app, 3MFs in your default 3MF app, and so on. To send a file somewhere else, use Open With.
Add any application Modelist should be able to send files to - Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer, OrcaSlicer, Cura, SuperSlicer, Blender, Fusion 360, Meshmixer, your own scripts, anything. Configure custom command-line arguments per app if you want to pass a profile or flag at launch.
Once you've used Open With on a file, Modelist remembers that choice and defaults to it next time. Useful when one model always goes through OrcaSlicer and another through Bambu Studio.
Running two copies of the same slicer side-by-side? Supported - Modelist lets you pick which instance to send to.
Open share.modelist.app on your phone (iOS or Android) and pair it with the desktop app via the QR code shown in Settings. After that, hit the share button on any 3D model link and it lands in your desktop's Inbox - no emailing yourself, no copy-paste.
Anything shared with you - whether from your phone or another Modelist user - lands in the Inbox first. Review, accept, or decline. Accepted files enter your library; declined ones are dropped. Expired share links are tracked so you know when something's no longer available.
Send a file to another Modelist user and it lands looking the way it does in your library: images, description, and tags attached, not a bare STL. Free-tier users can receive shared files even at the 100-file limit; sending requires a paid license.
Sharing features (mobile and user-to-user) are off by default - turn them on in Settings if you want them. There is no account to create: you address people by their email address. Modelist works fully offline without ever using cloud sharing.
No. Modelist reads files to render previews and extract metadata, but never moves, renames, or rewrites them. The only destructive action is delete, and it's a manual choice you confirm in a dialog. Your folder structure on disk is always the source of truth.
If you delete a file from inside Modelist (with the confirmation dialog), the file is removed from disk and the Modelist index is updated. If you delete a file from Finder/Explorer, Modelist notices on the next sync and marks it unavailable; if you restore the file from your trash to its original location, Modelist reconnects it with all its metadata, tags, and notes.
Move a file between folders on the same drive and Modelist still recognizes it as the same file - your tags, notes, custom thumbnail, and collection memberships all come along. Cross-drive moves currently look like a delete + re-add and lose attached metadata.
The watched folder is marked unavailable in the sidebar until the drive reconnects. Files stay in the database, marked as unavailable, with all metadata preserved. Once the connection is back, files become available again - no re-scan needed.
Rename or move a watched folder and Modelist will mark it unavailable. You'll need to remove the entry and re-add it at the new location, which triggers a re-scan. We're working on letting you update a watched folder's path in-place to preserve metadata across moves.
The core app works offline. Source enrichment (pulling from Makerworld/Printables/Thingiverse URLs) and update checks make outbound requests when triggered. Cloud sharing (mobile and user-to-user) sends data only when you explicitly use it. There's no analytics or telemetry on your library.
For moving to a new machine, or getting back to a known-good state.
Everything you built by hand: tags, collections, ratings, groups, notes, printers, materials, colours, and your watched folders, written to a single .modelist-backup file. Your 3D files themselves are never copied, so backups stay small. App preferences are deliberately left out, so restoring a backup never drags another machine's settings along with it.
Thumbnails are optional. Leave them out and the file stays tiny - previews simply re-render afterwards. Include them and Modelist shows a size estimate before you export.
Importing a backup replaces your current library and restarts Modelist, so it is a whole-library operation rather than a merge. If the backup came from another computer, Modelist lists every watched folder in it and where it should live now. Folders that still exist are matched automatically; anything else you point at a new location or skip.
Modelist checks for updates on launch. When an update is available you'll get a notification; downloading and installing happens with your confirmation. Your settings and library data are preserved across updates.
Open Settings → License & Version to see the in-app changelog. Every release ships with notes about what changed and why.
The free tier is everything-unlocked at a 100-file cap, no time limit. €20 buys v1 - all v1.x updates included. €60 buys lifetime - every major release of Modelist forever, including v2 when it lands. One-time payment in either case.
Settings → License & Version shows the current version and build. Useful when reporting bugs.
Email support@modelist.app for anything - questions, bug reports, feature ideas, edge cases your library exposes. When reporting a bug, please include your OS, your Modelist version, and steps to reproduce.
Bigger ideas live at ideas.modelist.app. Vote on what's already there, or post something new.
The full release history (with notes) lives on GitHub. Useful if you need to roll back, or compare what shipped when.
Settings → Logs shows recent app activity. Useful for troubleshooting an issue yourself or sharing context when reporting a bug.