Docs

Online-only cloud files

Placeholders stay placeholders until you say otherwise.

Dropbox, OneDrive and Drive can keep a file's listing on disk while its bytes stay in the cloud. Most apps accidentally download those files just by looking at a folder — a thumbnailer here, a preview there, and suddenly 40 GB of renders is coming down on hotel Wi-Fi. Plaza never reads a placeholder's bytes on its own.

Never downloads

• Browsing and scrolling, in every view.
• Selecting a file.
• Building the project index and search.
• Thumbnails — cloud files show a cloud tile instead.
• Re-linking metadata after renames and moves (identity checks are metadata-only).

Downloads, because you asked

• Open / open in the system player.
• Download from the right-click menu.
• Quick Look and Compare on the file itself.
• Dragging a file out of Plaza to another app — an export needs the bytes.

Cloud files keep their metadata life: name, size, dates, your tags and attributes, smart columns, stacks — everything that doesn't need the bytes keeps working while the file sleeps in the cloud.

Detection is per-platform (Windows attribute bits; Dropbox's own marker on macOS). If a provider hides its placeholder status from the OS, Plaza errs toward treating the file as local — the promise applies wherever placeholders are detectable.