An app that tidies your folders moves files you didn’t move yourself. Sooner or later it will move one you wanted where it was. So what matters most is what happens when it gets one wrong.
Omaculate answers that with a few rules that never change, on any tier and in any mode.
The Trash is the only way out
Omaculate never deletes a file, and it never empties the Trash. When a recipe says a file can go, Oma moves it to the Trash, the same place it would go if you pressed ⌘⌫ in Finder. It stays there until you empty the Trash yourself.
That makes the Trash a buffer you already know how to use. If something went there by mistake, open the Trash, find it and choose Put Back.
The Trash always asks
Most recipes move or rename files, and once you trust a recipe you can switch it to Just handle it so it runs by itself (that’s part of Grand Oma). Trash is the exception. Even when a recipe is set to Just handle it, anything it wants to send to the Trash goes on a separate list that waits for you to approve it.
Two more rules sit on top of that:
- The first look sends nothing to the Trash. When you set up Omaculate, Oma has a look at your folder and shows what she’d do. That first list never includes Trash rows, so the first thing you approve can’t throw anything away.
- Every Trash row shows the file’s size before you approve it, so you can see what you’re clearing.
Getting a file back
Every change Oma makes is listed in History.
- Moves, renames and tags can be undone for 90 days, one file at a time or a whole run at once. Oma checks that the file is still the one she left. If it was edited or moved since, that row says “Can’t undo — changed since” instead of guessing.
- Files sent to the Trash aren’t undone from the app. Their row has Show in Trash, which opens the Trash with the file selected, and you put it back from there.
Undoing a whole run goes newest first and skips any file a later run has touched, so undoing last Tuesday doesn’t scramble today’s work.
Nothing gets overwritten
If a file with the same name is already where Oma wants to put one, she adds “ 2” to the new name. She never replaces a file.
The same goes for undo. If putting a file back would land on another file with the same name, Oma asks: Keep both, Replace (which sends the other file to the Trash, and the sheet says so) or Cancel.
What Oma leaves alone
Some files are never touched, whatever the recipe says:
- Files still downloading (
.download,.crdownload,.part), and files changed in the last few seconds. - Files that are only in iCloud and not on this Mac.
- A zip on its own. The “Trash zips already unzipped” recipe only matches a zip with its unzipped folder right beside it, so the only copy of a delivery is never offered for the Trash.
- The original of a duplicate. “Trash duplicate downloads” only matches exact copies like “manual (1).pdf” next to “manual.pdf”, and never the original.
Skipped files show up greyed in the list with the reason, and Oma tries them again on the next run.
Why bother
A tidy folder is nice. Losing the only copy of a contract to get one isn’t worth it. These rules mean the worst Oma can do is put a file somewhere you didn’t expect, and History shows where it went.
