Why Mint

We looked at a lot of names, dozens of candidates over several weeks. Most of them were descriptive. They told you what the app did, but none of them felt like the app itself. ### Finding the Name We wanted something short: one syllable, impossible to misspell, and with some feeling to it beyond describing a function. Mint sounds fresh and clean, and it's one quick syllable. You mint new coins, and you keep things in mint condition, so the word already carries this idea of making things new again. That's pretty much what the app does to your filesystem. It also helps that it's a color. The whole visual identity ended up built around it. ### The Leaf We knew the icon from the start: a single leaf. We didn't want an abstract geometric shape or a skeuomorphic folder. A leaf is simple and organic, and you can recognize it at any size. The app icon is a dark leaf on a bright green gradient. In the menu bar Mint uses a plain leaf symbol instead, and it takes the menu bar's own color like the icons next to it. We made a point of not making a "cute" app icon. Mint is a utility, and we wanted it to look like a tool you'd trust rather than a toy you downloaded for fun. ### The Monochrome System One design decision we're proud of is that the whole UI is monochrome, with color used in only a few chosen places. The app is dark only, and the structure looks like this: - **Primary text**: #F5F5F7, close to white but never pure white - **Secondary text**: #8A8A8E - **Tertiary text**: #55555A - **Backgrounds**: a #131313 base, #1C1C1E cards, and thin white layers for anything raised - **Borders**: white at 8% opacity, subtle, they don't pull attention The main color in the app is green (Mint green, of course). Our rule is that green states facts and doesn't go on controls, so checkboxes and main buttons are white. You see green on things like the space a clean just freed, or the dot next to something that's running. Warnings and destructive actions get a muted orange and red. The disk chart uses a few more colors, because each kind of space needs its own band. Everything else is grayscale, so when you see green, it's usually a result or something happening right now. ### Design for a Utility A utility app has to do a lot without overwhelming you, and it should get out of the way when you're not using it. Mint sits in the menu bar as a tiny leaf icon, and the main window uses sidebar navigation. We didn't add a splash screen, a tour of tips or any gamification. The first-run setup does real work instead: a quick scan of your disk, then organizing one folder you pick. The one place we let ourselves have fun is the Organize step of that setup. Mint gets to be a bit playful there: tiles of your real files sit next to the folders they're going to, and when you organize, the tiles fly into those folders as the files move, so you get that satisfying moment when everything lands where it should. For a utility app, we think you pick one place where it gets to look nice and keep everything else quiet. For Mint that place is the organize preview, because it shows you clearly where your files will go. The rest of the app stays simple, and most of the time all you see is a small leaf in the menu bar.