Automating the process would save you a great amount of time, and there are applications that can help you do that. The most well known name in Mac realm is Hazel, but it’s not free. Mac users who prefers free apps could try Automator’s Folder Actions or the good but less-known SmartShuno.
Let’s Set Some Rules
If you want to give Smart Shuno a try and you visit the site to download the app, you will notice that the page is in Japanese. There’s also the announcement that the app is currently in Japanese only. But no worry, after you download, extract and run the app, the interface will appear in English. To download, go to the very bottom of the page and click the “Download” link (it’s the blue link written in Katakana). If you want to go a little bit further, you could use Google Translate.
Now, let’s get started. The interface of the app is very simple. There are two panes called “Rule” and “Schedule“. As the name suggested, the Rule pane is where you create some housekeeping rules, and the Schedule pane is where you determine how often should those rules be executed.
There’s also the”Do now” button if you want to execute the rules right away. To add a new rules group, click the “Add” button. A setting window will be opened.
Begin by giving the rules group a name (or description), then choose the target folder which the rules will be applied. Let’s say we want to create a rule group to move all the downloaded movies to Movies folder, then the target folder would be the “Download” folder. Since there are many kind of movie files, we should set the condition to be: “any” instead of “all” from the “When xxx of these rules are met” drop down choices. And then we should customize the rules with movie extensions such as: mp4, avi, flv, etc.
Click the “plus (+)” button to add new rules and “minus (-)” to delete existing rules. You can also play with the conditions to fit whatever housekeeping specifications that you need. The last customization step that we need to take is to determine what should Smart Shuno do if the above conditions are met. Go to the “Do this:” pane and click on the little “Plus (+)” button to choose the folder where the matched files should be moved.
You can move the files to several folders if you need to. You are also able to delete the original files by moving them to trash. Another option that you can choose is whether the moved file should be renamed if there’s already another file by the same name, or should the new file replace the old. It’s also possible to cancel the action under this condition. Click OK to save the rules.
Beyond The Simple Rules
Smart Shuno does only one simple thing: move files based on the customized rules, but users can add as many groups of rules as needed. With enough number of groups, your Mac will always be clean and tidy without the need to do manual house keeping labor. You can simply set the rules and forget them. However, there are few wish list that I hope the developer of this app will add in the future release. The first one is the integration of the app to System Preferences so that users don’t have to open the app first before the rules are executed (even though this problem can be fixed by adding the app to Start Up list). The second is the addition of other actions such as “open with” so that the app could do much more than only moving files. But in general, Smart Shuno is the perfect application for those who want to clean the clutters in their Mac automatically. Have you tried Smart Shuno? Do you know any other tips to keep your Mac tidy? Share using the comment below. Image credit: bandita
