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Tidy for Mac

Menu bar app that keeps Downloads and the Desktop organised on their own, naming files by reading what's inside them.

$9.00
In English

Tidy overview

Tidy keeps Downloads and the Desktop organised without you thinking about it.

What separates it from other file organisers: it reads what is written inside your images and PDFs with Apple's on-device OCR and names each file from its contents. A screenshot of an invoice becomes "invoice-mueller-gmbh-03-07-2026.png" instead of a timestamp. That same local index lets you search inside scanned documents, where Spotlight finds nothing because there is no text layer to index.

It also learns how you file. Move three files to the same place by hand and Tidy proposes the rule — one click creates it, one dismisses it forever. It never writes a rule on its own.

Everything else it does, it does quietly: archives Desktop screenshots, ejects mounted .dmg volumes and bins the leftover installer, sorts Downloads with your rules, groups screenshots by the app they came from, warns you when a scanned ID or a card number is sitting in plain sight, and flags files like "Invoice.pdf.app" that look like documents but run code.

Everything runs on the device, including the Apple Intelligence parts. No account, no server, no telemetry, nothing uploaded.

And it is built to be trusted with your files: it never deletes anything, it only touches files created after you install it, there is a dry-run mode that previews every move before it happens, and any run undoes in one click.

What's new in version 2.1.0

  • Tidy now warns when a rule can never run. Rules run in order and the first match wins — which meant a new rule could sit below one that claims the same files and silently never receive any. The editor now says so, with a one-click "Move this rule up". Reported by a reviewer who lost his first impression to it — sorry, and thank you.
  • CleanShot, Shottr, Xnapper and Monosnap screenshots are now recognised. macOS only marks its own screenshots, so third-party ones were invisible to Auto-Drop. If Tidy seemed to ignore your screenshots, this was why.
  • "Tidy older files…" on any watched folder. Watched folders still only touch files created after you add them — that promise stays. But each folder now has an explicit button to tidy its backlog too: with dry run on it only shows the plan, and every pass undoes in one click. One user wrote this was "the part I'd actually pay to have fixed" — here it is.
  • Habit suggestions now show their reach. Before you accept a proposed rule, Tidy tells you how many files it would move today — so a rule born from three files can't quietly take eighty.
  • Stage mode now hides widgets too — and restores everything exactly as you had it. Widgets are drawn by a different part of macOS than Desktop icons; both now hide together. And if you kept your Desktop icons hidden on purpose, switching stage mode off no longer turns them back on. Requested by our German reviewer.
  • Export and import your rules. A plain JSON file you carry to your other Mac yourself — AirDrop, a USB stick, whatever you like. Importing adds; your own rules are never replaced. "Nothing leaves your Mac" stays literally true: nothing leaves unless you carry it.

Also: settings damaged from outside are now backed up instead of silently reset, and several strings read more naturally in English and German.

View older Tidy versions

Tidy for Mac

$9.00
In English
Version 2.1.0
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