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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?

#131

Post by BFLpL0QNek »

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 found DevinThink at the end of last year and ended paying up for the full premium version for ocr when they had on a Christmas sale. Not sure why I never seen it before as it’s been around a very long time.

I used Evernote extensively for notes + going paperless. I was never comfortable and know better than storing private documents such as bank statements in Evernote (someone else’s computer aka cloud) but it was convenient and worked well.

I’m now slowly migrating Evernote content to Devonthink. It works extremely well, it is powerful and no subscription, it’s not cheap but as a dev I know development isn’t cheap and the price is justified for its functionality. Like you said you can get all the data you put in back out easily no lock in. Sure it’s not as shiny as newer hyped software but it works and is functional. I have some Hazel rules setup for example auto file downloaded statements.

What WebDAV server are you using? I tried NGinx but had issues as NGinx doesn’t fully support WebDAV, it was just that I already had a NGinx server running. WSGIWebDav seemed to work ok testing but not set it up properly yet on my NAS, wasn’t sure about trying Apache. My idea is to use WebDAV with all access via VPN to get same sync functionality as Evernote. WebDAV for syncing completely makes sense and was another reason I purchased it.

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

#132

Post by stunt »

I don’t use tags or any software.

I have my own folder structure with my own basic rules. I keep a copy of all important files synced in Dropbox, iCloud, and an external drive just to be safe.

Just a little bit discipline to not leave files in temporary places or with random names, and to clean them up when needed.

Path, directory names, and file names are giving me enough context to find them.

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

#133

Post by submeta »

farisjarrah wrote: post #123
submeta wrote: post #81

While I tried DEVONthink and have even written a personal document management system myself in the past, I have come to realise that no proprietary system will last forever. So I went back to files, folders, naming conventions and a good search tool + Finder replacement. As to the conventions: * I follow the recommendations of a German Professor named Loehn [1]. Prof. Loehn recommends to name every file with three pa…

Have you investigated symlinking INBOX folder so that its real location maps to a location inside your ~/Documents/FOLDERS location so that you only have one place to worry about all files?

Thank you for the suggestion. That is a good idea.

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

#134

Post by lolftw »

kbutler wrote: post #89
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't save files on the desktop Why?

Pros: super easy Cons: It's a global namespace and easily cluttered, and the clutter is visible as the default background of your display. It's like "saving things" on my physical desk - a bad habit I tell myself not to do, but still find myself doing. (chucks a few things that have been on my desk).

> It's like "saving things" on my physical desk - a bad habit I tell myself not to do, but still find myself doing. (chucks a few things that have been on my desk).

But on a physical desk I don't have options to sort, search etc. I do on the mac. I use the desktop as place for non-critical files everytime (like a screenshot that I have to attach to an email, or to export a image without background that I am going to use on a ppt). Basically just as a temp folder.

It is absolutly cluttered, but the ability to drop a temporary file there without thinking of structure or what it relates to trumps the clutter it creates.

Besides, with the addition of Stacks (https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT209101) it makes everything more manageable.

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

#135

Post by lolftw »

Terretta wrote: post #20

DON'T KEEP THEM ORGANIZED... USE SEARCH Learn to love Search, but give yourself a manual cheat mode that doesn't take any effort to maintain. I use the application "Hazel" with two tactics, one to clean up Desktop, one to clean up Downloads. For desktop, I use a freshness rule, and then a manual lookup hack. If it's likely this file isn't changing any more, Hazel sweeps it into folder. In downloads, I do freshness, b…

I like your rule based approach. I think I'll try it for myself.

My main "problem" with organization methods, is that I feel they get in the way of my creation process.

If i'm creating a PPT and I need an icon pack I don't want to think to where should I donwload it, if the project as a folder, where to export it or whatever... Just give me the icons, right now Im creating a presentation, I could care less about how my files are structured.

The final presentation will end up on google drive, or somwhere else "safe".

Your approach allows me to do this, and keep everything organized at the same time.

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

#136

Post by h1d »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #113
ilikepi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I rarely need anything in that folder beyond 10-20 documents like passport or birth certificate scans. You trust Dropbox with that sort of thing?

Yes. Why shouldn't I? What's the concern exactly?

They could be scanning things around to find patterns of human relationships from face recognition, could have backups that persist forever after you delete or provide data to government or whatever and you won't know. Privacy policy doesn't mean shit unless you can prove it's been broken.

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

#137

Post by h1d »

christophclarke wrote: post #67

~/Code/ L python/ L project1/ L ... L dotnet/ L web/ L work/ L ... ~/Documents/ L school/ L Spring2019/ L ... L personal/ L work/ That's about all I really access other than Downloads which is a huge mess that gets purged every so often. Anything of lasting value gets moved out of there asap. ~/Documents/ is backed up to iCloud so I can access them anywhere. (Tip: Any directory you don't want to be backed up can be s…

Folders to the rescue. /s

But really, that's usually all you need to organize.

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

#138

Post by raindropm »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #50
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.

I found we didn’t appreciate the spatial thinking ability of human brain enough. Right now what we got is the tech that gives us shallow 2-dimensional way ‘browser-style’ to interact with digital things, for the sake of convenient and less clutter.

The same thing can applied to physical books. No matter how convenient e-book reader is, it NEVER give me the same experience. For physical book, you can just feel the progress of story just by looking at that thickness of the book, or you can tell WHERE the event in the story happened (e.g. at top right section of certain page, for example) Can’t do that with e-book, every page is the same, not to mention when you change the text size and it reflow the paragraph...poof! Gone.

Somehow, the physicality of physical book made me read it till the end. Yes, the Kindle is also single-purpose device made for reading, but also a touch away from ton of books in your library, too, which is distraction in another form.

(and no, I don’t care for inky or old paper smell)

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

#140

Post by jason_slack »

k2enemy wrote: post #39

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 ├…

Thanks for mentioning synycthing...I'll check it out. Right now I have a series of rsync scripts as cron jobs that keep my stuff in sync on multiple machines.
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