How to Automatically Sort Your Downloads Folder on a Mac

Everything you download lands in the same folder. A few months later, Downloads holds installers you ran once, ZIP files you already unpacked, PDFs you meant to file, photos, and a second copy of the same file ending in “(1)”.

macOS has no setting that sorts the Downloads folder for you. You can build something with Automator's Folder Actions or, on recent versions, a Shortcuts automation: both react when a file arrives, with no preview and no undo. The other way is a file manager with folder rules. Folia Files watches Downloads and moves, renames, tags or sends to the Trash what lands there, by type, age, name or the site it came from, and shows you exactly what it will do before it does it.

What macOS offers on its own

Folder Actions, with Automator

Automator still comes with macOS. Choose File › New, pick Folder Action, choose Downloads as the folder it watches, then add actions such as Filter Finder Items (to keep, say, only images) and Move Finder Items. Save it, and the workflow runs each time something is added to Downloads.

It works for one simple job, and the limits show quickly:

• it only reacts when something arrives, so it can't clear out files that have been sitting there for a month;
• sorting into several places means several filters and moves in one workflow, or several workflows;
• there is no preview of what it will do, and nothing to undo if it moves the wrong files.

Shortcuts automations

Since macOS Tahoe, the Shortcuts app can run automations on a Mac too, and one of the triggers is a Folder: a shortcut runs when items are added to the folder you choose. Inside the shortcut, actions such as Filter Files and Move File do the sorting, and a Time of Day automation can run a cleanup shortcut every day for older files.

You still assemble the logic yourself, action by action. Folder automations can't watch an external drive, and macOS turns one off when the folder holds more than 10,000 items.

What only looks like sorting

Sorting or grouping a Finder window by kind or date added changes how the folder looks, not where the files are. Safari's Remove download list items setting only clears the list in Safari: the files stay in Downloads.

Automatic rules in Folia Files

Open the Rules tool

Choose Tools › Automatic Rules…, or click Tools in the toolbar, then Automatic Rules. The tool opens in a tab. While you have no rules yet and something in your folders needs tidying, it also lists Suggestions for Your Folders: the templates that would act on something in your folders right now, each with the number of items it would handle and a Create Rule button.

The New Rule menu offers Blank Rule and the templates. Four of them watch Downloads:

• Clean up Downloads older than 30 days: anything added more than 30 days ago goes to the Trash;
• Delete installers (.dmg, .pkg) after 7 days;
• File PDF invoices by year: PDFs whose name contains “invoice” go to Documents › Invoices, one folder per year;
• Sort downloaded photos by date: images go to Pictures, in year and month folders.

Write the rule

A rule reads like a sentence, in three parts:

• Watch: the folder, Downloads here, with Choose… to change it and Also look in subfolders.
• If: the conditions, the same as in the search: Name (contains, begins with, matches regex…), Extension, Kind (Image, PDF, Archive, Application…), Size, Date Added, Date Downloaded, Downloaded from (the website a file came from), Tag and more. Items must meet all conditions, or at least one.
• Then: Move To, Copy To, Rename To, Add Tag (a color tag), Move to Trash or Open. A move or a copy can go into a subfolder made of tokens such as {year}/{month}, from the date the file arrived; a new name can use {date} {name}, or {source} for the site it came from.

Sort to several places with one rule

Otherwise, If… adds a branch with its own conditions and actions. Each file follows the first branch whose conditions it meets, and a file that meets none stays where it is. One rule can tidy all of Downloads:

1. If Kind is Image: Move To Pictures, subfolder {year}-{month}.
2. Otherwise, If Kind is PDF: Move To Documents › PDFs.
3. Otherwise, If Name matches regex \.(dmg|pkg)$ and Date Added is older than 7 days: Move to Trash.

Everything else, such as a ZIP file you are still using, is left alone.

Check the preview, then turn it on

New rules start off, so nothing moves while you set them up. The Now section lists the items the rule would handle and what each one will become, such as “→ ~/Pictures/2026-10/IMG_4021.jpg”. Apply Now runs it once, right away. When the list looks right, switch on Active.

How the rules run

• When something changes in the watched folder, a couple of seconds later, and every 30 minutes for conditions on age.
• Never on a file that is still downloading: Safari's .download, Chrome's .crdownload, Firefox's .part and anything written in the last few seconds wait until they are complete.
• Once per file: a file a rule already handled isn't handled again unless it changes.
• Not while you edit it: a rule you are changing waits until you leave the editor.
• While Folia Files is open. To keep rules working, turn on Open Folia Files at login and Start in the background (no window) in Settings › General › Startup.

Nothing is deleted outright: Move to Trash puts files in the Trash. Each run goes into the history of the Operations button in the toolbar, where it can be undone in one click. After an automatic run, Folia Files tells you what the rule did and offers to undo it, and the rule's Recent Runs list can undo each run too.

Which one to choose

For one simple move as files arrive, a Folder Action or a Shortcuts automation is enough, and free. When you want several destinations, a cleanup by age, a preview first and an undo afterwards, rules do it in a few clicks. They are one of Folia Files' file tools, and if you are weighing them against Hazel, this comparison lists what each one does.

Rules are in both editions of Folia Files. Only the Run Command action is limited to the website edition: Apple's sandbox doesn't allow it in the Mac App Store edition.

If Downloads has already grown to many gigabytes, see which folders take the most space before you set up the cleanup.