We built our first Mac client for M-Files years ago. People liked it, and it taught us a lot. It also taught us where the limits were. This post is about why we built M-Client again from scratch, and why the credit for most of what is new goes to M-Files.

The first time: building against the wall

A client application can only do what the server lets it do. For years, the way for an outside application to talk to M-Files was the M-Files REST API. It is a solid interface for documents and their metadata: list a view, open a document, check it out, check it in.

A desktop client needs much more than that. When we built the first M-Client, we spent a large share of our time on reverse engineering: working out how the server behaved, finding workarounds, and building replacements on the Mac for things the API simply did not offer. Some features we could not build at all. Views could not be created or edited. The columns a user had chosen in a view could not be read. Personal settings lived only inside each client. Every Mac user felt those gaps, even if they never knew why.

What changed: M-Files rebuilt its own foundation

The modern M-Files Web client does not run on the old REST API alone. Underneath it, M-Files built a new, gRPC-based interface. It is fast, it is structured, and it covers the vault far more completely than anything before it. M-Files Web uses it for practically everything it does.

Most users will never notice it, and that is the point: it simply works. For anyone building a client, though, it is a treasure. Almost everything that used to be out of reach is now there, cleanly designed, because M-Files needed it for its own web client.

What the new foundation made possible on the Mac

Because M-Client can now speak the same language as M-Files Web, these work on the Mac exactly as they do on the web:

• Views as you configured them. Each view's own columns, sorting and widths, saved on the server, so the web and the Mac show the same thing.
• Creating and editing views. Filters, grouping and permissions of a view, from the Mac.
• Workspaces. An object opened as a page of tabs, with the same tabs as on the web.
• Permissions. The effective permissions of an object, its access control list and its automatic permissions, readable and changeable where you have the right.
• Rolling back a version. Straight from the version history.
• Your personal settings, shared with the web. Pins and pin groups, search history, your start tab and recently used templates follow you between M-Files Web and the Mac.
• Metadata card rules. The card configuration your administrator set up for M-Files Web applies on the Mac too: required and hidden fields, groups, labels and descriptions.
• Smart defaults. Create a document inside a view and its properties are filled in for you, as on the web.
• Vault applications. Client applications built with the M-Files UI Extensibility Framework run in M-Client, with the same Vault API they use in M-Files Web.
• Speed. Properties of hundreds of objects arrive in a single call, so long listings fill in quickly.

This time, no walls

The difference in how the work felt was striking. Instead of guessing and working around missing pieces, we could follow the same calls M-Files Web makes and build on a foundation designed for a full client. Features that took weeks of investigation in the first M-Client, or could not be built at all, came together in days.

The result is a Mac client that is no longer a simplified view of your vault. It is your vault, as your organization designed it, native on macOS.

Thank you, M-Files

We have worked with M-Files since 2008, and this is one of the most important things M-Files has done for its partners and its users, even if it happened quietly, under the hood of M-Files Web. It made the new M-Client possible.

If your organization runs M-Files with M-Files Web enabled, your Mac users can see the difference today. Start a free 15-day trial, or join our launch session.