Folder automation tools for Windows and Mac
Making the computer do the repetitive thing. One rule over one folder, many rules at once, or your own commands on a trigger.
4 programs, free while we’re in preview. One file each. No account, no installer, nothing to uninstall.
Run any command automatically when a file shows up in a folder you name.
The Simple one of the 4: it keeps the settings to a minimum and picks sensible defaults for you, so there is almost nothing to learn before it is useful.
Drop a PDF in Inbox and it gets filed. Dry run until you say otherwise.
The Vertical one of the 4: it is tuned for that work specifically, with presets and reports built around it rather than every setting under the sun.
Many watch-a-folder rules in one rules file, each failing on its own.
The Pro one of the 4: it adds the deeper settings and finer control that people who use it every day ask for, without getting in the way on a quick job.
A folder of workflow files a colleague can run right without reading them first.
The Team one of the 4: it adds what a team needs: command-line control for scripts, settings you can roll out across machines, and a record of everything that ran.
Reading on this job
- How to run something automatically when a file appears in a folder A watched folder is the simplest useful automation there is, and it goes wrong in three entirely predictable ways.
What all 4 of them do the same way
- Nothing is deleted. Anything a program removes is moved somewhere you can get it back from, and anything that changes files shows you the whole plan before it touches one.
- Nothing is reported back to us. No program here signs you in, phones home or counts what you did. The ones that use the network at all use it because that is the job — fetching a file you asked for, reaching a machine you named — and nowhere else.
- One file. Download it and run it. There is no installer, no runtime to fetch and nothing left behind if you delete it.
- The window and the command line are the same program. Double-click it for the window; give it arguments and the same binary runs as a command-line tool.
- The source is published for every program here, next to the download.
Looking for something else? Browse all 100 programs or see what a plan covers.