folie and Are.na
Checked 4 October 2026
Are.na is a place to collect and connect ideas: images, text, links and files saved as blocks into channels that other people can follow and reuse. It is member-supported, with no ads.
folie is private and narrow. It keeps your screenshots of interface design on your Mac, filed by component, style, typefaces and colours.
Side by side
| Feature | folie | Are.na |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A Mac menu-bar app. Press ⌘⇧7, drag a box over anything on screen, and the screenshot is filed. | A web platform of channels and blocks, built for research and connecting ideas. |
| Price | $9 once at launch (first 100 copies), then $15. Two Macs $18, then $30. Three Macs $27, then $45. | Free up to 200 blocks. Premium $7 a month or $70 a year. Supporter $120 a year. |
| Where saves live | On your Mac: a folder of PNGs and one SQLite file. | On Are.na, in your account. |
| Account | None. | Yes. |
| Platforms | macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel. No iPhone, no Windows. | Web, iOS, Android. Extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. |
| Ads | None. | None. Paid for by its members. |
Competitor details are from their own pages, linked at the bottom, as they read on 4 October 2026. Prices change; check theirs before you decide.
Where Are.na is better
- Connecting ideas across channels and people. folie has no social side.
- Any kind of content: text, links, files, not only screenshots.
- Free to start, and on every platform.
folie is Mac only, has no phone app, does not sync between machines, and needs either your own Claude API key (about a tenth of a cent a capture) or a model running on your Mac.
Where folie is different
- You never sort anything. A capture arrives filed by component, style, typefaces and colours.
- It captures native apps and logged-in pages, anything on your screen.
- Palettes export as CSS, Tailwind or hex.
- One payment, no limit on how many captures you keep, files on your own disk.
Which one to pick
If your references are part of a wider body of research, or you want to share it, Are.na. If you mostly keep screenshots of interfaces and want them searchable by what is in them, folie.
Questions
Does folie limit how many captures I keep?
No. The only limit is your disk.
Can I share a folie library?
There is no sharing built in. The library is a folder of PNGs, so you can send the files themselves.
Sources
Checked 4 October 2026. If something here is wrong or out of date, it will be corrected.
Other comparisons are on the alternatives page.