I tried to use Finder's tags but failed to keep things organized everytime. Are you using a specific app? Do you have some "tips" to keep a setup clean?
Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#2I don't use tags at all. I just use good old fashioned directories. My directory structures go pretty deep.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#3I don't use tags at all. I just use good old fashioned directories. My directory structures go pretty deep.
Neither do I. I find that tags are "optional" so they aren't used 100% of the time, but you are forced to place your file in a folder somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#4For source code I keep a fairly fixed folder hierarchy. I use ~/ for work stuff and ~/devel/ for personal projects and experiments.
I know a few people who use tags effectively. I never found it to work for me either.
On the other hand I find Spotlight to be pretty good at finding stuff. I use It extensively with relatively flat folder structures.
I typically go to the folder I want and then use spotlight to find whateverIm looking for.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#5I use MacOS directories as well. The top level directory is the year. The next level down is the major category, i.e. personal, business, church, etc. The next level down is the specific project under that category. I also add the date, in the form yearmonthday (20190307 for example) to the files which keeps them sorted in date order.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#6Having some more context would be nice, but here's some tips as a web developer.
* Don't save files on the desktop.
* Create a Projects or Dev folder in your home directory and make a folder for each project. (For Web development, I use Laravel Valet which automatically makes a foldername.test vhost inside ~/Dev.)
* My Downloads folder is very messy. I could probably set up a job to delete files older than 6 months, but I have plenty of space, so no need (yet).
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#7I do all document management with an app called DEVONthink. I’ve been working with digital paper apps for years, and DEVONthink absolutely crushes everything else. I put everything in it, and I sync it between devices using WebDAV via Seafile, which also works to get data offsite in case the house burns down. It’ll do encrypted databases, and it has mobile apps that work great. I scan documents directly into it, tag them, and sometimes link them from multiple folders, which Devon will do without copying them (or I can also copy them if I need to). It has fuzzy search capabilities and automatic OCR that is lightning fast. It’s one of a handful of apps that are always open on my desktop.
Documents aren’t stuffed into some database, either. They’re indexed and stored in a folder hierarchy that you can still access. This makes it easy to search and find them with tools like Alfred or Quicksilver or Spotlight. You can open them directly using apps like Word, and Devon doesn’t care. Devon also has an inbox you can use with Finder, so when you drop a file into the folder, it automatically moves to an Inbox folder in Devon for you to process and move to a final destination within the app.
It’s truly a fantastic piece of software.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#8I just use Finder and don't worry about it too much.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#9Having some more context would be nice, but here's some tips as a web developer. * Don't save files on the desktop. * Create a Projects or Dev folder in your home directory and make a folder for each project. (For Web development, I use Laravel Valet which automatically makes a foldername.test vhost inside ~/Dev.) * My Downloads folder is very messy. I could probably set up a job to delete files older than 6 months,…
For managing folders that collect cruft, or for doing things like deleting screenshots from the desktop after some period of time, I use Hazel. It’s great for menial maintenance tasks.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?
#10For source code I keep a fairly fixed folder hierarchy. I use ~/ for work stuff and ~/devel/ for personal projects and experiments. I know a few people who use tags effectively. I never found it to work for me either. On the other hand I find Spotlight to be pretty good at finding stuff. I use It extensively with relatively flat folder structures. I typically go to the folder I want and then use spotlight to find wha…
Spotlight doesn't work great for me. I have a large number of e-books and documents in my home directory and Spotlight is likely to return the most recently added books even if they are completely irrelevant to the search terms.
Results are a little better, sometimes, if I search specifically in a given folder and especially if the terms are in the filename. But it really should work globally.