Cleaning up the system with Fiplab Smart Folder Cleaner

On my work machine as well as home machine, I have a lot of “work” directories that gather a ton of files that I never go back and delete. This can be screenshots that I’ve already attached to tickets, or documents I’ve already stored in DevonThink, DMG files I forgot to delete, or temp documents I don’t need to keep long term.

I’ve now added Fiplab Smart Folder Cleaner to monitor several folders on my machine, and over time, delete out files that aren’t being used anymore. In my case, this monitors my Download directory and my SnagIt directory. It could monitor anything I want, but this is where a ton of stuff accumulates.

Obviously Downloads is where everything from the Internet collects. Over time, that becomes a massive pile of steaming @#$%. But with Folder Cleaner, if something hasn’t been touched in 30 days, it gets deleted. That gives me plenty of time to work with files, store what I need and delete them when I’m done. But, when I let things linger, Folder Cleaner will come along and get rid of the rest.

And to be honest, using the Download folder is not a way to organize file. So this instills order and gets me in the habit of keeping what I need and tossing what I don’t.

As noted, I use this for SnagIt, since I accumulate a lot of screenshots over time. But I clearly don’t need to keep them all. Some are for before and after comparisons. Some are to show an issue. But after a few days they should either be attached to a ticket or removed.

My SnagIt directory had hundreds of old screenshots going back many months. I didn’t need to keep all that. There are better ways to archive that info if it’s important. Otherwise it’s just wasting space.

Folder Cleaner only takes a few seconds to set up, you can add as many folders as you like, you can exclude folders, set different time periods, then let it work in the background.

I have saved a lot of hard drive space and been more diligent in my organization since I added it to my list of tools.

Smart Folder Cleaner – Keep Folders Tidy & Organized by Automatically Removing Unused Files