1.9.0
This release needs macOS 14 or later. If you are on macOS 13, do not install it — stay on 1.7.0. Tideline's updater still does not check the version of macOS you are running, so it will offer you this update anyway, and the app will not open once it has swapped itself in.
Tideline asks before it does anything to your Downloads folder, and it can put everything it filed back where it found it.
Tideline asks before it does anything
A fresh install used to open with a macOS permission alert already on top of the window, and to be filing within seconds of that being answered — a system prompt before the app had introduced itself, and a folder rearranged before anyone had agreed that it should be.
It now opens on the window, and on the question. Allow Access… is what raises the macOS prompt, at a moment you chose and after the sheet has said what the permission is for and how far it reaches. Until it is pressed the folder is not read at all: not swept, not measured, not scanned. Granting it is still not starting — what it buys is the sheet being able to tell you what a first sweep would actually do to the folder as it stands right now: 143 items would move into 12 folders, 4 stay loose. Then the rule it would follow, and two buttons. Nothing is swept until Start Filing is pressed: not on launch, not when the folder changes, not on the daily timer. Not Yet leaves everything exactly where it is, and the question is on the Overview pane and in the menu bar for whenever you are ready.
An install that predates all this has been filing for weeks and is left alone — an update is no reason to stop and ask.
Put Everything Back
Filing was the one thing the app did that you could not undo with a single gesture: a year of downloads spread across a hundred folders is not something anyone drags back by hand. Filing › Putting it back lists everything Tideline ever filed, grouped by the folder it would come out of, all of it ticked — untick what you would rather leave filed, then put the rest back into the root. The folders it empties go to the Trash, type folders included: an empty Installers/ is not something your Downloads folder had before Tideline, so putting things back puts that back as well. The usual rules hold — a name already taken counts up to report-1.pdf, folders you made yourself are never opened, nothing is deleted, and preview mode previews it.
Filing switches off once a real restore finishes. The next sweep would move back exactly what was just taken out, and that is not an argument worth having with your own downloads folder. The switch in the header starts it again.
Tideline installs with Homebrew
brew install --cask estruyf/tap/tideline
It fetches the same signed and notarized build this page hands out and puts it in /Applications — the download, the unzip and the drag, done by the thing a lot of people already reach for first.
It knows the app updates itself, so brew upgrade does not reinstall over a copy Tideline may have already replaced; brew upgrade --greedy hands the job back to Homebrew for anyone who would rather it worked that way. It knows the app needs macOS 14, which the in-app updater does not, so nobody installs a bundle that will not launch. And brew uninstall --cask --zap tideline removes the same three files the Uninstall sheet names.
Opening the app shows the window again
Tideline decided whether a launch was a login item by looking for an XPC_SERVICE_NAME in its environment, on the theory that only launchd sets one. Launch Services sets one too, for every app it starts, so from the second launch onwards every double-click looked like a login launch and the app started into the menu bar with no window at all — the only way back in was the menu bar icon.
It now reads the flag the launch notification actually carries for this, so opening the app from Finder, the Dock or Launchpad puts the window on screen, while a login item still starts with no window and no Dock icon. Closing the window is unchanged: the app stays in the menu bar and keeps filing. Each launch says which it was in the log file, so a report of "no window appeared" has something to stand on.
A refused permission is no longer a dead end
macOS asks about a protected folder once and never again, so a prompt answered with Don't Allow — or dismissed by accident — left the app with no way to ask a second time, and the banner could only point at System Settings and suggest a restart. It now offers Choose Downloads Folder… as well: picking the folder yourself grants the same permission, on the spot, without a trip through System Settings or a relaunch. It doubles as the fix for a watched folder that has been moved or deleted, since whatever you choose becomes the folder Tideline watches.
The window says so too. Waving away the welcome sheet without granting the permission left a window that could not explain itself: the status card said Paused, the folder card said nothing was there, and no control anywhere would ask macOS. The banner across the top now covers that state as well as a refusal — a lock rather than a warning triangle, since not having asked is not a fault — and carries the one button that raises the prompt. The status card leads with it too: what is blocking filing outranks whether filing is switched on, so it reads Waiting for permission and its button asks rather than files.
The sheets are the same window now
Every review sheet — duplicates, large files, old folders, catching up, putting things back, the preview and the uninstall steps — was drawn on the system's own window grey while the window behind it was the app's near-black. The palette reached the accents inside them and nothing else, so a sheet read as a panel macOS had put on top of Tideline rather than a part of it. They now use the same surfaces the window does, and the accent goes across with them: every confirming button and every tick box in a review came up in the system blue, and they are the app's yellow now.
The Overview pane fills the window again, too — the card listing the folder stretches to the height it is given, so an empty folder reads as three cards rather than three cards adrift in a void.
Install: download Tideline-1.9.0-macos-universal.zip below, unzip it, and drag Tideline to /Applications — or brew install --cask estruyf/tap/tideline. The build is signed and notarized.