Automatically Clear Your Downloads Directory
I download a lot of stuff. But I rarely go in and clean up my Downloads folder. I wanted an automated solution for cleaning it up and one where it enforced me to move files out of the directory if I cared about them.
I also didn’t want to pay for a solution, because that is stupid since it’s an easy task to automate. If I was on a Linux system, I would just create a cronjob. Instead of cron, apple likes launchD.
launchD uses a pain-in-the-ass xml format for starting/stopping daemons, applications, and processes.
If you write a launchD script by hand, good luck to you. I prefer to use Launch Control.
Launch Control makes creating launchD tasks super easy by using a GUI (which I usually can’t stand) and does validation checking (which you will need) and testing tasks. In addition, it has a cool icon.
It isn’t the best interface, but it is one of the only ones I could find. If you have a better tool, please let me know.
Once Launch Control is open, create a new job by clicking the plus on the lower left portion of the screen and then make the program look like this:
/usr/bin/find /Users/bhardin/Downloads/ -mtime +7 -exec rm -rf {} \;Note: When you save this, the ‘\’ will be removed.
Remove the Run at load section and add a StartCalanderInterval. Then change the Hour from Any to 00. This command will now run every day at midnight.
Breaking this command down:
- /usr/bin/find: Location of the find command.
- /Users/bhardin/Downloads: This is the location of the folder you want to automatically clean.
- -mtime +7: These parameters are passed to find. Rather than finding all files, this finds all files older than 7 days.
- rm -rf {}: This is the command that gets ran on all the files which find is passing in. The -rf is provided so that directories are destroyed also.
Originally published at bretthard.in on March 17, 2015.
