Tidy

Tidy is a $9 menu bar app for Mac that reads what your files actually say and gives them the name you would have given them. Screenshots, scanned PDFs, photos of receipts, Word and Excel files: Tidy reads them on your Mac with Apple's on-device text recognition, and nothing is ever uploaded. No account, no server, no subscription.

WHAT IT DOES ON ITS OWN

• Names screenshots by what they are. An email becomes "email-ana-torres-kitchen-quote.png", an Instagram post gets the app, the account and what it says, a web page gets its headline. Menu bars, tabs and the clock never end up in the name.
• Names documents by the title you see: the largest text on the first page of a PDF or Word file, not the letterhead. Invoices and receipts get date, type and issuer, taken from the paper.
• Every name says where it came from ("Because: email · Ana Torres · subject"), so a bad name is never a black box. Rename one by hand and Tidy notices and learns.
• Files away Desktop screenshots and sends them to the Trash once you stop using them. Groups them by the app they came from, and recognises CleanShot, Shottr, Xnapper and Monosnap.
• Ejects the .dmg you mounted and sends the installer to the Trash.
• Sorts Downloads, the Desktop and any folder you add, with rules: by type, by age, by a word in the name, by a word inside the file, or by where it came from (the site or the app that brought it).
• Write a rule in plain words, "PDF invoices to Finance", and Tidy builds it. On Macs with Apple Intelligence, freer phrases work too.
• Learns your habits: move three PDFs to the same folder by hand and it offers the rule. It never creates one on its own.
• In each folder it only touches files created after you added it, so you can point it at ten years of files without fear.

SEARCH BY WHAT'S INSIDE

• ⌥Space opens a search panel from any app and finds files by a word inside them, even scanned PDFs and screenshots that Spotlight can't read. It shows the passage and the page. Enter opens it, ⌘R reveals it in the Finder, and you can drag a result straight into an email.
• Optionally, it hands what it read to Spotlight, so ⌘Space and the Open dialog find it too, even with Tidy closed.
• Finds duplicates by content: two files that say the same thing under different names.
• Reads the due date on a bill and offers you a reminder.

YOUR IPHONE AS A SCANNER

• Live viewfinder, no cable, no app. It straightens the page, picks the rotation, and the scan lands in Downloads already named. Multi-page PDFs too.
• Extracts the text of any PDF or image to a .txt, and translates it offline.

PRIVACY AND SAFETY

• Warns if a card number, an IBAN or a passport is lying in the open, with real number checks (Luhn, mod-97), so no false alarms. It only warns.
• Flags executables dressed as documents ("Invoice.pdf.app").
• "Keep Tidy off this": anything you mark is never moved, renamed or trashed.
• A safety net for AI agents: protect a folder and undo what an agent did to it, back to any of 12 moments. Or right-click a folder and let the AI work on an instant copy.
• Its index is encrypted, with the key in your Keychain.
• It never deletes. Anything removed goes to the Trash, and every action undoes with one click.

AND A FEW MORE

• Stage mode hides the Desktop and widgets before you share your screen, then puts everything back.
• "What changed?" shows two versions of a document side by side.
• Siri and Shortcuts actions to rename, search and protect.
• A connector for Claude Desktop, off by default: Claude organizes your folders from short summaries, never from the files themselves, and you approve the plan in Tidy.
• Palito, a stick man in the notch who tells you what Tidy is doing and dances to your music. Off by default.

THE DETAILS

• Native and universal: Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 14 or later. Signed and notarised by Apple.
• Speaks English, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese.
• $9 once, lifetime updates, 14-day refund. Activated with a code by email, checked on your Mac.
• Reviewed by wattblicker.de (5/5), Six Colors, That Apple Guide, MacMagazine and Brett Terpstra.