Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by mdevere » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

Generally agree with ppl who say that searching is more important than organising. I use Alfred to search, but I think the default Finder app is quite good these days.

Most important thing is having a consistent filenaming convention. This helps you find files via search. I use 'YYMMDD_HHMM name' if I authored the file or 'YYMMDD_HHMM [sender] name' if someone emailed it to me.

Tangentially, what I'm really happy with is how I manage my web bookmarks. I don't use browser bookmarks or folders. I save bookmarks to Pinboard.in, a cloud service. Then there's a nice Alfred extension which allows me to find them (http://www.packal.org/workflow/alfred-pinboard).

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

#42

Post by mdevere » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

mdevere wrote: post #41

Generally agree with ppl who say that searching is more important than organising. I use Alfred to search, but I think the default Finder app is quite good these days. Most important thing is having a consistent filenaming convention. This helps you find files via search. I use 'YYMMDD_HHMM name' if I authored the file or 'YYMMDD_HHMM [sender] name' if someone emailed it to me. Tangentially, what I'm really happy wit…

I don't have pics anywhere. That's all in Photos app/ iCloud. It's very cheap, something like $1 per month.

I use Backblaze to backup everything to cloud.

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

#43

Post by TimMeade » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

oskapt wrote: post #7

I 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…

Excellent. Thanks. I have been looking for exactly this type of software. Trying it now!

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

#44

Post by cygned » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

I basically have two trees:

1. Software; organized by domain name in ~/software, containing all git repositories I work on (~/software/github.com/user/repo)

2. Documents; stored in ~/Nextcloud, synced with a server. In there, I have a nested system of Johnny Decimals (https://johnnydecimal.com) - nested, because I manage multiple projects which itself use that format again, so

    ~/Nextcloud/10-19 Companies/10 Company A
    ~/Nextcloud/10-19 Companies/11 Company B
    ~/Nextcloud/10-19 Companies/12 Company C

My desktop is my temp folder, everything on there will be "resolved" within a day or two.

This way, I have all my documents synced and available on all my devices. I do not use Finder tags but rely heavily on Spotlight search.

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

#45

Post by emgee_1 » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

Emacs with dired; also on Linux and all Bsd’s

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

#46

Post by beautifulfreak » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

oskapt wrote: post #7

I 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…

EasyFind by Devon is a great search app too, and it's free.

https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

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

#47

Post by hprotagonist » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

Nothing goes on my desktop.

Things are split contextually by “where they’re syncing to”— default locations for photos and music because that’s what itunes wants, work documents in work dropbox, etc.

Most of the time when i want to find a file i use Spotlight. I don’t really care where on disk it is per se because i can just fuzzy-search for it in the GUI or at the command line anyway.

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

#48

Post by maliker » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

I give every project their own folder, and I put that in Desktop/Projects/, which I backup/sync via Google Drive.

Then I navigate using Launchbar (https://www.obdev.at/launchbar). It's a fast search tool, but it has a cool noun-verb interface that lets you find stuff and then move it/open it/pipe it through a script, etc. Couldn't live without it.

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

#49

Post by newscracker » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

oskapt wrote: post #7

I 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…

I never got the hang of Devonthink and couldn’t get into the habit of using it for all (or even most) files. How did you get started with it and what resources, if any, did you use? Do you always only index files (while they remain in whatever folders you have left them) or do you also import (copy into it) too?

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

#50

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

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…

It's kinda funny. Classic MacOS had a spacial file manager, so folders and files stayed where you put them. I'm guessing that isn't true anymore? This kind of thing seems like a regression.