Folder Monitor — watch folder automation
Watch folder automation that runs a tool, recipe or organize rules on every new file — auto-compress, auto-rename, auto-sort while the app is open.
Folder Monitor is watch folder automation for files: it watches a folder and runs a tool, a workflow recipe, or pure rename/move rules on every new file that lands — while the app is open, with no uploads and nothing leaving the machine.
Protect your originals first
Replace source is ON by default: the output overwrites the original file and no backup is kept. Before following along, open Settings › General and turn Replace source off, or pick a separate output folder.
Outputs land back in the watched folder (or the subfolder your rules name), and Organize monitors rename or move the originals themselves. Dry-run rules first, and don't point a monitor at a folder you can't afford to have reshuffled.
Create a monitor
Folder Monitor › Create Monitor asks for three things:
- Folder — the folder to watch.
- Type — Tool, Recipe or Organize only (rename/move, no tool run). Tool monitors offer the 32 automation-friendly tools — compress, convert, strip metadata and so on — filtered to the file types each accepts; a recipe monitor runs one of your saved Workflow Recipes.
- Create — the monitor starts watching immediately.
The page keeps live stats — Unread, Active Monitors, Total Monitors, Last Activity — and a Recent Activity feed of every file each monitor handled, so you can audit what ran without opening the folders. Monitors pause and resume individually (Pause monitor / Resume monitor).
Smart rules
Smart rules — "Add conditions, rename & sort" — decide which new files a monitor touches and what happens to them. Three presets are one click each:
- File invoices by date — PDFs containing "invoice" → rename
{detected-date} {name}→ move toInvoices/{year} - Screenshots by month —
Screenshot*names → move toScreenshots/{year}-{month} - Bank statements — PDFs containing "statement" → rename
{detected-date} statement→ move toStatements/{year}
Conditions are ANDed together — every one must match:
| Condition | Matches when |
|---|---|
| Name contains | Plain substring in the filename |
| Name matches (* ?) | Glob-style wildcard match |
| Extension is one of | pdf, jpg, png — comma list |
| Size over / under (MB) | File size threshold |
| Content contains | A string inside the file's text (PDFs and text files) |
Then what happens to matches:
- Rename to — a filename template with tokens:
{name}{ext}{date}{year}{month}{day}{counter}and{detected-date}, which reads a date out of the file itself (inside PDFs and text) rather than its filesystem stamp. - Move to subfolder — a path template with the same tokens, e.g.
Invoices/{year}sorts each file by the year it was issued, not the year it arrived.
Preview on current files dry-runs the rules against what's already in the folder — "Dry run — nothing is changed" — and reports "N of M files would be handled" before you commit. Smart rules themselves are a Pro feature; the dry run is free, so you can build and verify a ruleset before it ever acts.
Limits and behaviour
- Monitors run while the app is open. Quit the app and watching stops; reopen it and they pick back up.
- A new file waits until it finishes writing (a stable size) before the monitor touches it, and a monitor never re-fires on its own output.
- Tool and recipe runs count against the free plan's 8 files per day like any other run; hit the cap and the monitor pauses with a note in Recent Activity instead of half-processing files.
Related
- Workflow Recipes — chain tools, then point a monitor at the recipe
- Batch rename files — the same tokens, run manually
- AI access over MCP — manage monitors from an assistant
- Batch rename automation guide