Most automation asks you to trust it on day one: write a rule, switch it on, hope for the best. Omaculate does it the other way round. Oma shows you her work until you’ve seen enough of it, and only then offers to stop asking.
Ask first: see the plan, then approve it
Every recipe has a mode, and new recipes start in Ask first. When a recipe finds something to do, Oma doesn’t do it. She makes a list.
Each row is one file and what would happen to it: moved to a folder, renamed, tagged, or sent to the Trash. You can:
- untick anything you’d rather she left alone,
- press Space to look at a file with Quick Look,
- press Approve (or ⌘↩) to go ahead with the ticked rows.
The button says how many: “Approve 9” means nine files. Rows Oma can’t act on right now, like a file that’s still downloading or one that’s only in iCloud, show greyed with the reason. They aren’t counted, and she tries them again next time.
If you don’t approve, nothing happens. The list waits in the menu bar until you do.
Just handle it: for recipes you trust
Once a recipe has done the right thing a few times, approving it gets dull. Switch it to Just handle it and Oma runs it by herself, on its schedule or as files arrive. Afterwards a notification tells you what she did (“Oma tidied 11 files”) with an Undo button, and everything is in History.
Just handle it, schedules and on-arrival tidying are part of Grand Oma. The free version always asks first and tidies when you press Tidy now.
You can mix the two. One recipe can archive old downloads on its own while another still asks before it gathers invoices. The menu bar panel shows “Ask first”, “Just handle it” or “Mixed” so you can tell at a glance.
The trust offer
Oma keeps a quiet count for each folder: finished runs that changed something, with nothing undone afterwards. When that count reaches three, she offers once to just handle that folder from now on.
- Yes switches that folder’s recipes to Just handle it, except the ones that send files to the Trash.
- Not yet means she won’t offer again.
- Undoing anything from a run in that folder sets the count back to zero.
Only runs in a folder Oma watches count. The first look during setup doesn’t, and neither do one-off tidies with Tidy a folder….
The Trash never stops asking
Whatever mode a recipe is in, anything headed for the Trash waits for you. If a Just handle it run would send files to the Trash, those files go on a separate list for that folder, and they stay there until you approve them.
Omaculate never crosses that line by itself. A move can be undone for 90 days, but clearing a file out is your decision.
