a plugin for my favorite asset and reference manager

eagle milk — a free eagle asset manager plugin that streams your library to your phone, with offline support. built because i wanted my refs on the porch.

for as long as i’ve been doing art, i’ve been trying to figure out a good reference and asset management solution. i’m really into moodboards and ideating. i started out gridding and arranging my images in photoshop, then started using vizref, then switched to pinterest, then got locked out of my pinterest several times mid-project for ominous unexplained community violations, then tried using my zettelkasten to organize my references and all of my many 3d assets and plugins for content creation and filmmaking, which ate up my entire obsidian cloud budget in about 2 notes.

this year i discovered eagle asset manager and it’s great. the interface is awesome, i love how i’m able to organize and tag and subtag and color code all of my assets.

the eagle milk plugin window

i love doing plein airs and working on the go. sometimes i even just like drawing on my porch. for some reason i find it a lot easier to do art for fun outside of my office/studio. lately my focus has been modeling assets that are going to ship with our app, ünflat, and the cool thing is that i get to do it from the app, so i’m not chained to my desk right now.

the one thing i felt was missing from eagle is the ability to take at least some of my refs on the go. i did search the marketplace and wasn’t really able to find a viable solution that was currently supported or worked. so, i built eagle milk and thought i’d share it with the community, in case someone else finds it useful.

eagle milk is a background service plugin for eagle. it’s a node http server that streams thumbnails and original files from your home disk. you access it via a js web app on your device (which you can add to your home screen, so it behaves just like a normal app), and it has a grid gallery, filters and sorting via folders and tags, and a pinch-zoom viewer. you’re able to get offline support by installing an https certificate on your device, so you can back up any folders you need when you’re not on your home network and access them whenever and however you want. if people end up wanting it, i can extend the plugin so that downloads work on windows too, i just don’t use windows very often.

requirements

eagle 4.0 (build 12 or newer) on your computer
any phone with a modern browser, on the same network
offline folders require macos on the computer (everything else works on windows too)

install

soon there will be a link here where you can get the plugin straight from the eagle marketplace. but until they approve my listing:

download EagleMilk.eagleplugin.
double-click the downloaded file. eagle opens and asks to install the plugin. confirm.
if double-clicking does not work, open eagle and drag the file onto the eagle window.
a notification appears with the address to open on your phone — for example http://your-computer.local:41596. the same addresses are shown in the plugin window (eagle → plugin menu → eagle milk).

use it

on your phone, open the address from the notification. the phone must be on the same network as the computer.
add it to your home screen for an app icon.
tap the sliders icon for sorting, grid size, layout, and day or night theme. tap the filter icon for folders, tags, rating, type, and color.

keep folders on your phone

saved folders stay browsable when the computer is off or you are away from home.

on your phone, open /setup on the plugin address (there is also a link in the plugin window). follow the short guide to install the plugin’s certificate. this is a one-time step and is required by phone browsers for offline storage.
use the https address from then on and add that one to your home screen.
in the filter drawer, tap the arrow next to any folder to save it. saved folders appear under “on this phone” with update and remove controls.

note: deleting the home screen icon deletes the saved folders on that phone.

good to know