Tideline

Documentation

Tideline files older downloads into folders named for the day they arrived. Today's files stay loose in the root where you expect them. These pages cover installing it, the question it asks the first time you open it, and every setting in the window.

Start here

Install

Homebrew or the disk image, where it has to live, and how it keeps itself current.

First launch

The permission prompt, the look at what a first sweep would do, and the button that starts it.

The window

The band, the sidebar and the Overview pane — what is on, what ran, and what the folder holds.

The rules

Filing

Which folder, how long things stay loose, how the dated folders are named, preview mode, and the way back out.

Routing rules

Folders that claim a file by its name, or by the site it was downloaded from — so an invoice is filed as an invoice.

Type folders

Send every .dmg to Installers/ whatever day it arrived on.

Schedule

When a sweep runs: on a folder change, once a day, at startup, or any combination.

Clearing

Sending dated folders to the Trash once you have stopped needing them.

Reclaim space

Duplicates, big files and old dated folders — everything that could give space back, in one place.

Move out

Find things across Downloads and everything already filed, then move the batch somewhere else entirely — and put it back in one go.

The menu bar

What the icon shows and what its menu can do without opening the window.

Everything else

General and activity

Notifications, the folder size beside the icon, the log file, and the record of what moved.

Updates

The daily check, what it verifies before it installs anything, and how to switch it off.

Troubleshooting

Nothing moves, a file stayed put, a file landed under the wrong day.

Uninstall

Removing the app, its settings and its log — and what it deliberately leaves behind.

Windows Beta

There is a Windows build. What it does, what it does not do yet, and how it differs from the Mac app.

Two rules that hold everywhere

They are worth knowing before anything else, because every feature on these pages obeys them.

Preview mode covers all of it. Filing, clearing, duplicate collapsing, the large-file review and catch-up each have a preview path, so you can see what any of them would do before it does it. It is on the Filing pane.

Building it yourself

These pages are about using the app. The technical documentation — building, signing, releasing, the filing contract both platforms implement, and the state of the Windows port — lives with the source: