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organize - The file management automation tool
Full documentation at Read the docs

• About
• Getting started
  • Installation
  • Creating your first rule
• Example rules
• Advanced usage
• Command line interface

About

Your desktop is a mess? You cannot find anything in your downloads and documents? Sorting and renaming all these files by hand is too tedious? Time to automate it once and benefit from it forever.

organize is a command line, open-source alternative to apps like Hazel (macOS) or File Juggler (Windows).

Getting started

Installation

Python 3.6+ is needed. Install it via your package manager or from python.org.

Installation is done via pip. Note that the package name is organize-tool:

pip3 install -U organize-tool

If you want the text extraction capabilities, install with textract like this:

pip3 install -U "organize-tool[textract]"

This command can also be used to update to the newest version. Now you can run organize --help to check if the installation was successful.

Creating your first rule

In your shell, run organize config to edit the configuration:

rules:
    - folders: ~/Downloads
      subfolders: true
      filters:
          - extension: pdf
      actions:
          - echo: "Found PDF!"

If you have problems editing the configuration you can run organize config --open-folder to reveal the configuration folder in your file manager. You can then edit the config.yaml in your favourite editor.

Alternatively you can run organize config --path to see the full path to your config.yaml)

Save your config file and run organize run.

You will see a list of all .pdf files you have in your downloads folder (+ subfolders). For now we only show the text Found PDF! for each file, but this will change soon... (If it shows Nothing to do you simply don't have any pdfs in your downloads folder).

Run organize config again and add a copy-action to your rule:

actions:
    - echo: "Found PDF!"
    - move: ~/Documents/PDFs/

Now run organize sim to see what would happen without touching your files. You will see that your pdf-files would be moved over to your Documents/PDFs folder.

Congratulations, you just automated your first task. You can now run organize run whenever you like and all your pdfs are a bit more organized. It's that easy.

There is so much more. You want to rename / copy files, run custom shell- or python scripts, match filenames with regular expressions or use placeholder variables? organize has you covered. Have a look at the advanced usage example below!

Example rules

Here are some examples of simple organization and cleanup rules. Modify to your needs!

Move all invoices, orders or purchase documents into your documents folder:

rules:
    # sort my invoices and receipts
    - folders: ~/Downloads
      subfolders: true
      filters:
          - extension: pdf
          - filename:
                contains:
                    - Invoice
                    - Order
                    - Purchase
                case_sensitive: false
      actions:
          - move: ~/Documents/Shopping/

Move incomplete downloads older than 30 days into the trash:

rules:
    # move incomplete downloads older > 30 days into the trash
    - folders: ~/Downloads
      filters:
          - extension:
                - download
                - crdownload
                - part
          - lastmodified:
                days: 30
                mode: older
      actions:
          - trash

Delete empty files from downloads and desktop:

rules:
    # delete empty files from downloads and desktop
    - folders:
          - ~/Downloads
          - ~/Desktop
      filters:
          - filesize: 0
      actions:
          - trash

Move screenshots into a "Screenshots" folder on your desktop:

rules:
    # move screenshots into "Screenshots" folder
    - folders: ~/Desktop
      filters:
          - filename:
                startswith: "Screen Shot"
      actions:
          - move: ~/Desktop/Screenshots/

Organize your font downloads:

rules:
    # organize your font files but keep the folder structure:
    #   "~/Downloads/favourites/helvetica/helvetica-bold.ttf"
    #     is moved to
    #   "~/Documents/FONTS/favourites/helvetica/helvetica-bold.ttf"
    - folders: ~/Downloads/**/*.ttf
      actions:
          - Move: "~/Documents/FONTS/{relative_path}"

You'll find many more examples in the full documentation.

Advanced usage

This example shows some advanced features like placeholder variables, pluggable actions, recursion through subfolders and glob syntax:

rules:
    - folders: ~/Documents/**/*
      filters:
          - extension:
                - pdf
                - docx
          - created
      actions:
          - move: "~/Documents/{extension.upper}/{created.year}{created.month:02}/"
          - shell: 'open "{path}"'

Given we have two files in our ~/Documents folder (or any of its subfolders) named script.docx from january 2018 and demo.pdf from december 2016 this will happen:

• script.docx will be moved to ~/Documents/DOCX/2018-01/script.docx
• demo.pdf will be moved to ~/Documents/PDF/2016-12/demo.pdf
• The files will be opened (open command in macOS) from their new location.
• Note the format syntax for {created.month} to make sure the month is prepended with a zero.

Command line interface

The file management automation tool.

Usage:
    organize sim [--config-file=<path>]
    organize run [--config-file=<path>]
    organize config [--open-folder | --path | --debug] [--config-file=<path>]
    organize list
    organize --help
    organize --version

Arguments:
    sim             Simulate a run. Does not touch your files.
    run             Organizes your files according to your rules.
    config          Open the configuration file in $EDITOR.
    list            List available filters and actions.
    --version       Show program version and exit.
    -h, --help      Show this screen and exit.

Options:
    -o, --open-folder  Open the folder containing the configuration files.
    -p, --path         Show the path to the configuration file.
    -d, --debug        Debug your configuration file.

Full documentation: https://organize.readthedocs.io