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Comment by tmikaeld | Hacker News Reader

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 same order.

00 - Tests

10 - Code

11 - Code (Testing)

12 - Code (Other)

20 - Design (Sites)

25 - Design (Other)

30 - Services

35 - Marketing

40 - Apps (Web)

41 - Apps (Hosted)

50 - Docs

51 - Guides

60 - Sysadmin

etc...

This creates a logical and consequential structure that's easy to update, change and manage and you can have many levels.

Just consider your numbers for your use-case so you won't run out and sub-numbers can be unclear/messy to look at and navigate.

For managing downloaded files automatically, I use Hazel.

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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)

I heavily use the keyboard to jump to certain folders in Finder, e.g. "p" jumps to "projects". Not possible with this system unless you remember each and every number.

I don't go that far, just let alphabetical work.. I do prefix `!` or `_` in front of a couple directories to push them to the top in my editor though.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t you want them to sort alphabetically?

Alphabetically sorting it, would make it harder to find and use what you need the most - but by using a numbered structure you can have the most used folders at the top.

Also, I've found that I remember position easier than visually looking it up alphabetically.

You could just use four digits, 5001 - Midfile stuff, 7000 - End stuff, 0999 - Fairly upwards stuff.

No need to feel so cramped then.

Exactly, but I've used smaller numbers to keep it compressed and i plotted all the folders i need in advance.

Like i wrote, consider your numbers for your needs.

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