I am the Editor In Chief for my marketing team and need to download marketing assets (briefs, videos, etc.) from our internal review tool and make sure they are in line with expectations. Right now all files download to the Download folder and I want to move these files from that folder to a specific folder so I can review and delete them (they take up a ton of space). If I could specify that certain sites automatically download to a folder or use Automator to do this for me, that is what I need help with.
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I believe the short answer to your question is “No”. You could certainly write a folder action that could “watch” your Downloads folder but I can’t think of any way to ascertain how a given file came to arrive there, without a hint like filename or a tag.
I second the recommendation of Hazel.
However, whether or not Hazel can do this will somewhere depend on how you download them. For example, I downloaded a free app called Disk-O from https://widgetworx.com/projects/disko.html which left me with a file named Disk-O.zip.
If I run this command in Terminal:
mdls -raw -name kMDItemWhereFroms Disk-O.zip
it will show me an array named kMDItemWhereFroms which looks like this:
(
"https://widgetworx.com/resources/Disk-O.zip",
"https://widgetworx.com/projects/disko.html"
)
If you just want the URLs, you could do something like this:
mdls -raw -name kMDItemWhereFroms Disk-O.zip | tr '"' '\012' | egrep '^http'
which would give you this:
https://widgetworx.com/resources/Disk-O.zip
https://widgetworx.com/projects/disko.html
Hazel can use the same “Where From” data as part of its rules:
For example I could use “contain item” as “widgetworx.com” to sort “Disk-O” into a particular folder.
Note: In order to find the “Where From” criteria, click that first dropdown, and then choose “Other…”. In the window which appears, type “Where” and it will show you the option to add it.
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Automator can run shell commands, so if mdls works reliably, one should be able to use Automator for this. Of course it wouldn’t be as easy as using Hazel.
Frankly, Hazel will make quick work of setting up and doing this. I don’t use a rule like this now but used to use “Source URL/Address” to do this. May only work if you use Safari or Mail according to the Hazel docs.
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I could have sworn download source URLs used to appear in the Get Info (Cmd-i) window. Is that not the case any more, or am I misremembering?
That depends on the browser saving the files. Safari populates that info (Firefox too I believe), Chrome and Chromium based browsers don’t.
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Edge does and is based on Chromium.
I stand corrected. For the record, Brave doesn’t (thought it was a Chromium quirk).
Maybe it’s part for Brave’s privacy features.
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