What is Bit Buddy?

Bit Buddy Feature Image

Your drives. At a glance.

Bit Buddy has been available to download for over a year, but there has never been a definitive guide or "explainer" post detailing what Bit Buddy is and how to use it. It may seem complicated, but Bit Buddy, boiled to its most simple of features, is nothing more than a device logger. How Bit Buddy is utilized depends entirely on the user and their workflow.

What is Bit Buddy?

Bit Buddy is a device logger designed to assist creative professionals and content creators in their creative workflows, unlocking the ability to see their device usage, among other useful stats, at a bird's eye view. Being designed for creative workflows, Bit Buddy is complete with useful metrics such as Usage and Use status markers, as well as tags and network status indicators.

Using Bit Buddy

There is no one "accurate" way to use Bit Buddy — it adapts and grows to your device collection. Below are a few common workloads that Bit Buddy was designed with in mind.

Video Workflows

For those in the video field, having to manage and juggle the countless external drives you inevitably pick up can become a struggle — as was the case when Bit Buddy was being developed! In this scenario, a drive could be added to Bit Buddy for:

  • Active Projects
  • Archived Projects
  • Video files or additional library files
  • SD cards used during shoots (with SD Card Pool*)

Clicking into the Active Projects device reveals more information about the device that was entered when first saving the device. Here you can access file information, maintenance logs, connect to the drive (if it's network-attached), and quickly adjust the amount of used storage using Quick Edit. The same goes for every single device added to Bit Buddy.

In SD Card Pool, SD Cards take on a new life, receiving an updated Device view with updated information. Inside SD Card Pool, you can view shooting location information, along with the usual capacity and used amounts.

For NAS (network-attached storage) systems, you can add them and connect the web address for easy access when on the same network, provided it has a web interface. If NAS systems aren't a factor, maybe Cloud Storage is. You can easily mark (or log!) cloud storage in Bit Buddy for easy access/sign in.

Photography Workflows

Photography is a beautiful art form, but what isn't beautiful is the countless PSD and PXM files and photos lying around the desktop and computer. With Bit Buddy, SD cards for each camera can be added and clearly marked, providing an easy and quick way of finding the right card for whichever photoshoot you're on that day.

After the shoot, you need a place to store the photos. Sure, you could leave them on the card or drive, but that's never recommended. Instead, transfer the RAW files to your main external hard drive or, if you don't have one yet, your internal hard drive. Then, add the device, external hard drive or computer, to Bit Buddy with all of the relevant information. The beauty of Bit Buddy is that you don't have to just use it with external hard drives. It can be used for virtually any device imaginable!

Collector Workflows

Somewhat out of left field, for all of the device collectors out there, Bit Buddy could be for you! If you find yourself picking up cool pieces of gear or equipment and want a snazzier way to store it all, look no further than Bit Buddy! With Bit Buddy, you can log:

  • Computers
  • Cameras
  • Servers
  • Tablets
  • Headsets
  • And more!

Further, you can write whatever information you want about each device in either the File Information section (adding/editing a device) or in the Other Info section (detail view).

So, what is Bit Buddy?

Bit Buddy is, well, a lot of things, but most importantly its a tool meant to be used in whichever way fits your workflow. If you're a photographer, Bit Buddy is for you. If you're a videographer/editor, Bit Buddy is for you. Yes, if you're a device collector, Bit Buddy is even for you! Bit Buddy is for any and everyone with that little something they're collecting — and then some!

Bit Buddy is available for free on the Apple App Store and is available for iOS and iPadOS.

SD Card Pool requires Bit Buddy "Pro."