Why Mint

We considered many names. Dozens of candidates, weeks of deliberation. Most were descriptive — they told you what the app did. None of them felt like what the app *was*. ### Finding the Name We wanted something short. One syllable. Impossible to misspell. Something that carried feeling, not just function. Mint. Fresh. Clean. A single sharp note. You mint new coins; you keep things in mint condition. The word carries the idea of renewal — making things fresh again. That is literally what the app does to your filesystem. It also helps that it is a color. That became the anchor for the entire visual identity. ### The Leaf The icon concept was clear from the start: a single leaf. Not an abstract geometric shape, not a skeuomorphic folder. A leaf — organic, simple, immediately recognizable at any size. The final design is a dark glossy leaf shape on a vibrant green gradient background. At 16x16 in the menu bar, it reads as a clean green droplet. At 512x512 in the dock, you can see the leaf detail. We specifically avoided the trap of making a "cute" app icon. Mint is a utility. It should look like a tool you trust, not a toy you downloaded for fun. ### The Monochrome System Here is a design decision we are proud of: the entire UI is monochrome with strategic color accents. The color system adapts to light and dark themes through a single structure: - **Primary text**: full opacity white/black - **Secondary text**: 70% opacity - **Tertiary text**: 45% opacity - **Backgrounds**: layered with 3 elevation levels - **Borders**: subtle, never attention-grabbing The only color in the entire app is green — Mint green, naturally. It appears on the health status dot in the dashboard, the heatmap cells that show activity intensity, and the accent on interactive elements. Every other UI element is grayscale. This creates a visual hierarchy where color always means "something is alive here." ### Design for a Utility Utility apps face a particular challenge: they need to be powerful without being overwhelming, and they need to disappear when you are not using them. Mint lives in the menu bar with a tiny leaf icon. The main window uses a sidebar navigation pattern. There is no splash screen, no tutorial carousel, no gamification. The one deliberate design indulgence is the folder gallery. That is where Mint is allowed to be playful — seeing your files grouped into clean destination tiles, watching the preview update as you switch organize plans, the satisfying moment when everything falls into place. Finding identity for a utility app means finding the one place where you let it be beautiful and keeping everything else quiet. For Mint, the beautiful thing is the clarity of the preview — a clean picture of where your files will go. Everything else is just a simple, green leaf.