Tidy - Your Mac tidies itself: screenshots, installers, Downloads

@etiennegarcia Thanks Etienne! That was the original itch — the day I started building Tidy I counted 14 forgotten .dmg files in my Downloads. And the fun part: it doesn't discriminate. Seconds after I installed it for the first time, it ejected and trashed its own installer. It practices what it preaches :)

@ark_y_k Fully custom! Sorting is rule-based: each rule is a set of extensions → a destination folder, and you can edit everything — add your own rules, change the folders, set a minimum age (e.g. "only move installers older than 1 day"), group into monthly subfolders, or toggle any rule off.

It ships with sensible defaults (Documents, Images, Archives, Installers…) so it works with zero setup, but nothing is fixed.

And the part I'm most proud of: you can just type a rule in plain English — "PDF invoices to Finance" — and Apple Intelligence builds it on-device, inferring the extensions, folder and icon. No syntax to learn, and nothing leaves your Mac.

@neuroartist Thank you — you just described the target user perfectly (past me, every Sunday).

On the AI: you can describe rules with as much context as you like — "invoices and receipts as PDFs go to Finance" — and the on-device model turns that into a rule. The honest nuance: what it produces is still a strict, inspectable rule (extensions → folder), by design. The AI is the translator, not the judge — no fuzzy per-file decisions moving your files on vibes. Content-aware sorting is a tempting future direction, but only if it keeps the "you can see exactly why" property.

And you're the second person today asking for a full reviewable history — it's on the 1.1 list, and your exact use case ("what did Tidy put in the Trash before I empty it") is what I'll design it around. Today the panel shows recent activity + one-click undo; 1.1 turns that into a proper log.

@aleynal0ij Thank you — that trust is exactly what I optimized for.

And good news about your WIP folder: it's already safe, by design. The sorter only looks at loose files sitting at the top level of Downloads — it never looks inside folders, and it never moves folders (the only exception is .app bundles, which macOS treats as single files). So your client assets are invisible to Tidy, at midnight and always.

That said, an explicit exclude list is a fair idea for power users — adding it to the 1.1 list. Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion!

@luis_parker Yes! The menu bar panel has a live Activity log — every action is recorded with the filename and timestamp: "invoice.pdf → Documents", "Screenshot archived and renamed: …", "Installer to Trash: …". So "where did it go?" is answered at a glance for recent actions, and there's a one-click Undo right next to it.

And as a deeper safety net: since Tidy never deletes, a file is always in one of three predictable places — its rule's folder inside Downloads, the screenshots archive (one click to open from the panel), or the Trash. Never gone.

A full searchable history is a fair ask though — adding it to the 1.1 list. Thanks!

@bekirtrkneux6c Thank you! "Set up once and forget" is literally the design goal — there's a section on the site with almost exactly that title. My success metric is honestly a bit backwards: the less you open Tidy, the better it's working. The panel is there for the day you're curious about what it did — the other 364 days, it should just quietly earn its $9.

@ferdibatszcb Thank you — and you've spotted something real: you're the second person today to say the "never deletes" part is what made them relax. It might deserve a promotion from footnote to headline.

And "the right level of magic" is exactly what I was going for: the AI writes the rule, but the rule is a thing you can see — extensions, folder, minimum age, all visible and editable before it ever runs. Magic that shows its work, not a black box that moves your files on vibes.