Updated: Folder automation in macOS Tahoe
Today I updated a story I wrote back in August about folder automation in macOS Tahoe. One of the great new features in Tahoe is a whole slew of automations attached to Shortcuts, including not just time-based ones but ones based on when files or folders change on your Mac.
Shortcuts is a little impenetrable, so I thought I’d give a couple examples of how you handle building an automation when a folder changes. (The trick is to repeat through the list of changed items and act on them one by one, perhaps preceded by a filter to limit the items to the ones you actually want to act upon.) Using this technique, I’ve built automations that convert files of the wrong format into the right one when they appear on my Desktop, file downloads to the appropriate places in my filesystem, and run scripts to modify downloaded calendar files from my airline of choice.
It’s all very useful, and one of my favorite features in Tahoe. But the reason I updated the story is that half of it used to address how you get an automation to act only on files at the top level of a folder, rather than within subfolders. There were several ways to solve the problem—all of them tricky. Fortunately, Apple subsequently updated Tahoe to add a “Ignore subfolders” checkbox that does all the work for you. So I ripped out that whole section, and things are a lot clearer now.
If you are running Tahoe and haven’t explored Automations within Shortcuts, I highly recommend giving it a look.