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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?

#33

Post by expertentipp »

I've learned not to rename the default ~/{Pictures,Downloads,Desktop,Documents,Videos,Music} as they conveniently have the same name regardless of the OS and there are many applications and default actions bound to them. Desktop blank. For everything else unix style filesystem convention - directories at the ~/, all lowercase, name 3-5 characters long.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

#34

Post by tsp »

tmikaeld wrote: post #14

Have tried all apps out there, even the "Database" ones - but it's not portable and it's an instant lock-in. Plus most of the Apps bind to folders anyway, so you'll have a lot of "junk" that you have no idea what it is. What I've found to work is this. Main root folders few and named easily. - Customers - Internal - Private - VMs All sub-folders have numbers, so they can always sort by name so they're always in the s…

I heavily use the keyboard to jump to certain folders in Finder, e.g. "p" jumps to "projects". Not possible with this system unless you remember each and every number.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

#36

Post by yodsanklai »

I have a ~/dev folders with all my git projects. Then a ~/shared folder with stuff shared with a linux server at work (synchronized using unison). Everything else is on Icloud. I usually have a few files/folders on the desktop waiting for being sorted. I've never had any use for tags.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

#38

Post by CyberFonic »

FerosMorgen wrote: post #29

For a start, I don’t have anything at all on the desktop. The download folder is always clean, because I either delete files or just move them to folders in documents. I am a perfectionist, and so I am calmer.

My top level directories are like: Accounts, Clients, Projects, Apps. Then sub-directories etc. I use symlinks e.g. when a client project is reused as an App or vice-versa.

Everything initially gets downloaded into ~/Downloads and then moved as appropriate. Having two Finder windows open makes this very easy. One stays on ~/Downloads and the other changed to suit the destination.

I am a heavy Terminal user, with multiple active windows, so most of my current work-in-progress is a "cd ...".

I replicate the above to a Linux desktop with rsync based scripts. So I basically perform the same activities on both platforms, e.g. LibreOffice, etc. Hardly use any Apple software anymore, notable exception being iTunes for the various iPads and iPods around the house and car.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

#39

Post by k2enemy »

I don't use the Documents folder and have it `chflags hidden` in the Finder. Desktop is always empty. `data` contains documents, while `db` contains databases and datasets for research. `var` is mostly vm images. The others I think are self explanatory.

`work` and `src` are synced to my linux computer at work via syncthing.

    [k2enemy@indy ~]$ tree -L 1
    .
    ├── Desktop
    ├── Documents
    ├── Downloads
    ├── Library
    ├── Movies
    ├── Music
    ├── Pictures
    ├── Public
    ├── bin
    ├── data
    ├── db
    ├── etc
    ├── src
    ├── var
    └── work

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

#40

Post by ponyous »

Mac's Finder is total garbage compared to any other file browser I used in my opinion, when I switched from Windows I remember some features missing and nothing was better. Maybe tags, but I haven't seen anyone use them... I found tags useful to mark episodes of shows I watched but nothing else really.

I have everything in designated OS folders (Pictures, Videos, Documents, ...) and a new one called Projects. Projects used to be part of Documents, until Apple one day decided it's time to sync Documents to the iCloud (with introduction of APFS), which corrupted my projects folder and just straight up removed some files (I don't have every toy project in git), so some (5+ projects) are broken now. (note: I did everything to not have that folder synced, but it just wasn't respected so yeah...).

iCloud contains important documents (subscribed for 200GB extra space).

Since that fuckup with document/projects I subscribed to Backblaze for full system backup.

Downloads are split into multiple subfolders - different browsers, different browser profiles (work/personal), torrents.

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