What are smart folders and how they make your life easier

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you are tired of arranging files, music and letters by hand, let the system do it for you.

Smart folders are a wonderful thing. Mac owners use them most actively, but their analogues can be found in Windows as well. Smart folders can do a lot: collect documents you are actively working on, find your favorite music on disk, display images of a similar size or photos taken with a specific camera. If you set up the smart folders you want, you don't have to search or sort data in regular folders.

Smart folders are technically not folders, but search settings. The moment you open a smart folder, files with certain criteria are added to it.

How to create smart folders

Mac

Smart folders are one of the main features of the Mac. They are in Finder, Mail (smart boxes), Photos (smart albums), iTunes (smart playlists).

To create a smart folder in Finder, start typing into the search bar. Next, add new search criteria and specify where to search for files. Then save your smart folder. If necessary, add it to the Finder panel so that it is always at hand.

If you add conditions by clicking the "+" sign, the Mac will search for files that match all the criteria. If you hold down Alt while adding a condition, the system will search for files that match any of the criteria.

To edit an already created smart folder, open it and click on the gear icon in the Finder toolbar.

Windows

On Windows, smart folders are called saved searches. To create a saved search, start looking for something in the Explorer window and click on the Search tab. Add the required search criteria and save. By default, it is sent to the Saved Searches folder, but you can save it anywhere so that the searches you want are always visible.

Applications

Smart folders are found in many applications, regardless of platform. These are filters in email clients, smart playlists in players, tags in torrent clients.

Using smart folders

The documents

Let's say you're working with a group of documents that you need to keep close at hand. All files you need contain certain keywords, for example "report", and were created or edited in the current month. By creating a smart folder that includes these search terms, you will constantly see new reports that you are working on, wherever you save them.

Images

Images and photos are arranged in smart folders, like other files, but you can set specific search criteria for them. You can make a folder that collects images of a certain size or photographs taken in a specific location, if your camera or phone is geotagged.

You can search for images both in the file managers Finder and Explorer, and in special programs for managing your media library, such as Photos for Mac.

Music

You can create smart playlists in iTunes or in Clementine or AIMP players.

To create a playlist that will collect untagged music, set the condition "Artist", "Name", "Genre" or "Year" in the smart playlist and leave the fields blank. This way, you can see at a glance which songs are missing tags. As soon as you put them down, the tracks will disappear from this playlist.

To create a playlist with your favorite songs, set the following condition: "Number of plays" is more than 25, "Rating" is the same as "Like" or "Rating" is more than four stars. This way you will collect the most listened and highly rated tracks in one place.

In the same way, you can create playlists for recently downloaded songs that you have not yet listened to, or a playlist with unnecessary music that has a low rating.

mail

Smart boxes are available in Mac Mail, Thunderbird, Evolution, Outlook, and the Gmail web interface. They can be used to filter incoming mail flows. In addition, smart mailboxes are able to place labels and assign priority to emails.

For example, the Jobs smart box can collect emails from your colleagues by filtering them by recipient. Or, if email attachments contain.indd layouts or.pdf files, they will go to the Layouts smart box. You can also create inboxes with important messages to which you have not yet replied, or with emails with a specific subject received no later than last month.

Downloads

Another use case for Smart Folders is to sort your downloads. If you have everything downloaded from the Internet goes to the Downloads folder and settles there, it will not be easy to sort out this mess.

To sort your files, create smart folders for each type of download: Archives, Videos, Documents, Pictures, Music, Applications. Next, assign to each folder the necessary search terms by file type and configure them so that downloads are displayed by date.

Additionally, you can create a "Delete" folder, which will contain files that have been in the "Downloads" for more than a month. If you never use them, you can get rid of them in one fell swoop.

Torrents

Tags in torrent clients may well act as smart folders. Transmission, qBittorrent and other torrent downloaders can label content based on the content and download files to specified folders. Films will go to Films, and music to Music.

Smart folders, filters and playlists are customizable. It all depends only on your needs.