Comment by screemers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by screemers | Hacker News Reader

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Hi HN,

I built this simple tool to solve a personal problem: my Downloads folder was always a complete mess.

Smart File Organizer is a free, open-source Windows app that runs in the background, monitors a folder you choose, and automatically moves files into subdirectories (Images, Documents, Archives, etc.) based on their extension.

I wrote it using Python and the standard Tkinter library for the UI. It's a very simple implementation, but it gets the job done.

I've just released the first version and I'm here to get your honest feedback. What do you think of the concept? Are there any obvious features I'm missing? Any suggestions on how to improve the code are also very welcome.

Thanks for taking a look!

Organizing files is a difficult problem.

For me, grouping by extension would not help. That only serves to bundle my shopping lists with my project plans and tax forms (all .doc), or the cool online picture I saved to get mixed in with my holiday photos (both .png).

I'm not sure how the even begin solving this. Perhaps this is one of the rare instances where AI could help. But only if it works completely local and offline.

Thank you for this amazing feedback! You've perfectly captured the real, more complex problem here. I completely agree that grouping by extension is just the first, most basic step.

Your comment was so insightful that it inspired me to act on it right away. I've just released v1.2.0 which introduces the foundation for a custom rules engine.

For now, it allows sorting based on keywords in the filename (e.g., moving any file with 'invoice' in its name to a specific folder), which is the first step towards the context-based sorting you described.

You can see the new release here: https://github.com/Screemerss/Smart-File-Organizer/releases/...

This is just the beginning. The long-term plan, thanks to your suggestion, is to explore metadata-based sorting and eventually look into privacy-friendly, local AI models for true content analysis.

Thanks again for the great suggestion, it's been incredibly helpful!

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