Common questions.
Most of these are about Backblaze B2 rather than about Bucketree, because B2 has a handful of behaviours that surprise people and cost them money.
If yours is not here, write to support@macupp.com and it probably will be.
Keys and access
Either. Bucketree takes whichever you give it, checks what it permits before storing it, and drives its interface from that.
The master key is the easiest way to start, and it is the only key that can create another one, because a B2 key can never grant more than the key that made it. It is also the only key that reports capabilities Backblaze adds later, since a scoped key’s capabilities are fixed when it is created and there is no endpoint to update them.
A scoped key is worth moving to because it limits what a mistake can reach. That is an argument about blast radius rather than about virtue, and it applies to every application on your Mac rather than to this one. The application keys guide covers the whole subject.
In the macOS data protection keychain on your own Mac, reached by entitlement rather than by a per-application permission, which is why it never asks you for a password on launch. Keys are sent to Backblaze and to nobody else. There is no account with us for them to be sent to.
Yes, through iCloud Keychain. The shared set is owned by iCloud rather than by any one machine, so turning sync off on one Mac stops that Mac looking rather than deleting anything.
The menu items and buttons for it close, and a setting the key cannot read is reported as unreadable rather than shown as switched off. Those are different things and conflating them is how people conclude a bucket is unprotected when it is simply not visible to that key.
Expensive B2 surprises
Because B2 hides rather than deletes by default. The file gets a hide marker, the version is still stored, and it is still on your bill. Every client shows you the same thing; the difference is whether it tells you that is what happened. The deleted files guide has the longer story.
Two clocks. Thirty days from uploading to hiding, then seven more from hiding to deleting. No field on the form shows you the total, which is why people set what they think is a month and get five weeks. The lifecycle guide walks through both clocks and the total.
What it costs
A little. Listings are class C transactions. Backblaze gives you 2,500 free a day and charges $0.004 per thousand after that, so ordinary browsing is effectively free and a script that walks a large bucket is not. Bucketree tells you when a listing came from its cache and therefore cost nothing.
Because counting a bucket means walking it, and walking it costs listing calls. Scanning is always something you ask for and can stop, on the principle that cost should never ride on an impatient click.
The B2 native API publishes no usage, transaction, storage-total or billing endpoint at all. Any application claiming to show you your bill is estimating. Bucketree reports what you are storing, which it can count honestly, and says that is what it is doing.
An interrupted large upload leaves its parts on B2. They are stored, they are billed, and they do not appear in an ordinary listing, so they can sit there for years. Bucketree finds them, says what they are costing, and offers to finish or discard them. The abandoned uploads guide has the detail.
Finding and moving files
Yes, and the console cannot. Every bucket has a search field in its toolbar, and Search in the sidebar runs any number of conditions over one bucket or all of them: name, extension, size, date, kind, encryption, and current files, every version or hidden files. Results can be downloaded, shared, hidden or deleted where they are. Backblaze cannot search on its own end, so it is a listing walk that costs time rather than money, and the pane says so. The search page has the detail.
Where it fits
Bucketree speaks the B2 native API directly rather than the S3-compatible surface, which is what lets it manage things the S3 surface does not expose, application keys among them. It is a B2 client only, and that is the trade for the depth. Where the S3-compatible surface does one job more efficiently, such as deleting files a thousand at a time, Bucketree uses it for that job, against the same account and with the same key.
It covers the account work you do most often, and it is where you will spend your time. Three parts of the console have no API at all, so they are out of reach for any client: Snapshots, Reports, and Caps and Alerts. For those the console is the only route.
Bucketree browses and transfers. Mounting B2 as a volume is a different kind of product, and several existing ones do it well.
It transfers at the speed of your line. Both directions were measured: near your B2 region a single connection already saturates a domestic line, so the ceiling is your broadband rather than any client.
Not yet. An MCP server is the first update after launch, so Claude or any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol can list, search, fetch and share files in your buckets with the key Bucketree holds, which it never sees. Read about the MCP server.
Buying it
$25 a year for three Macs, or $75 for ten, after a thirty day trial that asks for no card. Three Macs can also be bought outright for $99, covering this major version. Prices are shown in dollars, pounds or euros depending on where you are, and the checkout charges you in the one you see. Pricing has the detail.
Freemius, the merchant of record. They are the seller for the transaction and they handle sales tax and VAT wherever you are. Worth knowing before you look at the statement, because an unrecognised name is how a chargeback starts.
Browsing and downloading keep working. An application pointed at somebody’s backups has no business holding them hostage over a lapsed trial.
macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon, and a Backblaze B2 account with an application key. Intel Macs are not supported.
Inside the app. Bucketree checks for new versions and installs them with your permission, so you never download it twice.
