Binky
Binky sorts your files.
A macOS app that sorts your files into tidy folders. Quick Sort clears a pile once; Routines keep watching. Waits for files to finish landing. Free and open source.
13 MB · v1.5.1 · Apple Silicon · macOS 14 Sonoma
Binky sorts your files.
A macOS app that sorts your files into tidy folders. Quick Sort clears a pile once; Routines keep watching. Waits for files to finish landing. Free and open source.
13 MB · v1.5.1 · Apple Silicon · macOS 14 Sonoma
Images, PDFs, media, documents, archives, apps, screenshots, misc — each routed into tidy destinations inside the fussy folder you're calming.
Unknowns land here first — nothing sketchy silently disappears. Activity and history spell out messy origins.
Hide the Dock icon and run Binky quietly from the menu bar. Sort Now, pause watching, open History — no window needed.
Quick Sort tidies a folder in one pass from the organizer. Turn on watch and each routine waits for files to settle, then routes. Pause without throwing away the setup.
Predicates across name, kind, origins, OCR hints, Finder tags. Rename tokens, extras like extract-then-trash archives, DMG-to-Applications installs, fan-out-by-tag folders.
Parallel workflows for Downloads, Desktop, shared inboxes, whatever's yelling. Jump with ⌘1 (Quick Sort) and ⌘2 (Routines). Each source keeps its toggle, rule stack, and tag defaults — protect a Finder tag and Binky won't nudge tagged files.
Inline dry-run beside the source card mirrors the live path; confirm tidy only when calm.
Routes files by where they came from. A Dribbble download goes to Design. A bank email attachment goes to Finance. Done before you touch it.
Speak loosely — preview what Binky heard before the rule snaps in. On macOS 26 Tahoe, Foundation Models lend a sharper pass when Apple exposes them.
Spots the total and the vendor. Routes financial documents automatically, no folder-watching required.
Sorts only after a file has fully landed. No half-copied regrets.
Routine defaults plus per-rule tagging. Spotlight hues still rescue memory lapses — protected Finder tags keep chosen files politely frozen.
Plug Binky into your own Shortcuts. Sort a folder on a hotkey, after a Focus mode, or as part of a bigger routine.
“Sort with Binky” from the right-click menu. The fussy stuff never needs a full app launch.
Backs off on Low Power Mode and thermal spikes. Large-batch pacing — Auto, Gentle, or Aggressive — keeps the Mac from sweating.
Optional Login Item so Binky's already there when the folder starts fussing.
Sort, preview, and run Routines from Terminal — same rules and prefs as the app. Build from source with SwiftPM.
No sign-in, no upload step. Sorting runs locally. The site may use Fathom; the app doesn't phone home.
Screenshots named by their contents. Vision reads the screen; Binky does the filing.
Hashes everything — SHA-256 first; perceptual sniffing catches screenshot twins insisting they're unique.
Files that haven't been touched in ages get quietly archived. The watch folder stays clean.
Figma exports, client zips, video renders, PDFs — sorted when they finish landing. Quick Sort for a clean sweep; Routines plus source-aware rules push assets toward project disks without babysitting Downloads.
Lecture slides, school forms, receipts, tickets, tax PDFs — out of the heap and into folders that make sense.
Quick Sort or Routines. Sorted folders. Source-aware rules. A Review pile for the weird stuff.
Download for macOSHazel writes rules. Refolder asks AI. Dropzone wants a drag. Binky just watches, sorts, and parks the mess — no subscription, no setup tax.
Rough tradeoffs — features move. Full comparisons →
Binky |
Hazel
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Price
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Free | |
Watch folder
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Review folder
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Waits for downloads to finish
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Optional Finder tags
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Undo moves
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Where macOS agrees | |
Custom rules
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Sort preview
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Open source
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MIT | |
App size
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13 MB |
Real quotes from GitHub Discussions. Want to share your take? Leave a review.
Binky isn't from the App Store, and the build isn't notarized today. That's a distribution choice, not a data choice. The source is on GitHub under MIT so you can read what it does.
Sorting stays on your Mac. No Binky cloud, no upload step, no account.
What leaves the machine
If Binky’s icon in Applications has a line through it, your Mac doesn’t match this build’s CPU (current releases are Apple Silicon only)—see Mac and macOS requirements. Otherwise that’s Gatekeeper.
Nope. Open the app, stay on Quick Sort, hit Sort when you want a folder calmed — Downloads stays the polite default. Add Routines when you want the same routing to run on its own. Reach for Describe a rule once you crave specifics.
Quick Sort is a one-shot sweep — pick a folder, hit Sort, done (⌘1 jumps there). Routines are named, persistent watchers: each one has its own source folder, rule stack, and tag defaults that run automatically (⌘2). Start with Quick Sort; graduate to Routines when the same folder keeps yelling.
No. Sorting stays on your Mac — no Binky cloud, no account. Once a day the app checks GitHub for a newer release (that's the only automatic outbound request). Details: Your data, in plain English.
It isn't Apple-notarized or Mac App Store today. That's distribution — the binary ships straight from GitHub as free MIT open source. For what the app actually talks to over the network, read Your data, in plain English. First-launch Gatekeeper pain is separate:
Yes. SwiftUI, native frameworks, no cross-platform runtime. Apple Silicon (M-series Mac). Intel-based Macs are not supported for the current DMG and Homebrew cask. macOS 14 Sonoma or later. On macOS 26 Tahoe, the UI uses Liquid Glass where available.
Dinky shrinks images, video, audio, and PDFs. Its current releases need Apple Silicon and macOS 15 Sequoia or later — see dinkyfiles.com for download and install help.
Each routine declares its sorted destinations and downstream actions — rename tokens, archive extraction, Finder-only DMG installs, Finder tag spreads, Trash when warranted.
Images (jpg, png, gif, webp, svg, heic…), PDFs, Media (mp4, mov, mp3, m4a…), Documents (doc, txt, md, xls…), Archives (zip, rar, 7z, tar…), Apps (dmg, pkg, app), Screenshots (matched by name pattern), Misc (everything else). Unknowns or ambiguous types go to Review.
Binky watches the folder you pick (Downloads by default). For Dropbox, Drive, iCloud, etc., it reacts after the sync client finishes laying bytes on disk — same idea as catching a fussy saver.
Yep — names, extensions, kinds, sizes, sheltered Finder tags, download origins, OCR hints — then reroute, rename, tag, unpack archives, install DMGs quietly, trash when you swear it's junk.
Moves originals. Nothing duplicated, nothing left behind in Downloads. That's why the stable-file gate and the Review folder exist — Binky won't touch a file it isn't sure about.
The watch folder only acts while Binky is running. Files that arrived while it was off sit untouched — run Sort Now when you're ready and it'll sweep them up.
Derek Castelli builds client sites in Figma and Webflow. He wanted a Downloads workflow that behaved without acting sneaky.