HOW TO Clean up your messy files

1 Pick your folders

Folder Tidy has two boxes telling you to pick source and destination folders. The first is the messy folder, the second is the one where everything will be magically sorted. Click Choose or drag and drop the folders in place.

2 Organise subfolders

Folder Tidy’s sorting is based on rules. Under ‘Step 3’ on screen, choose whether the app will reach inside subfolders to organise their contents too. You can also add detailed rules and tweak other options.

3 Sorting Rules

The Sorting Rules button contains predefined rules that put files into folders based on their type (text files in the Text folder, for example). You can enable or disable these rules by clicking the checkbox by each one.

4 Add a custom rule

Click the ‘+’ in the bottom-left corner to add a custom rule. Give your rule a name and define the folder that the files will be sorted into. To add a folder within a folder, add a slash, such as ‘Documents/Pages files’.

5 Rule parameters

Underneath, start defining your rules using the drop-down boxes. For instance, you can choose ‘Last modified date’, ‘is within last’, ‘x days’. Click the ‘+’ to add the rule, add any others you need, then click OK.

6 Ignore List

Back on the Preferences pane, click the Ignore List tab, then click the ‘+’ to add any files you want Folder Tidy to leave in place while it is sorting through your folders. Hold ß or ç to add multiple files at once.

7 Extra options

Click the Options tab to enable or disable some more miscellaneous preferences. If you run Folder Tidy regularly, the final option is useful to add a date to the name of the output folder and keep things in order.

8 Get tidying

When you are done, close the Sorting Rules dialog box and click Tidy. The app gets to work sorting your files and, depending on the options you set, might hide your open windows and show the output folder in Finder.

9 Undo Tidy

Another dialog box appears when the process is finished. To put the files back in their original state, click Undo Tidy. Alternatively, when you next open the app, click the Undo tab, select a tidy, then click Undo.