Wednesday App Finder: File Architect Organizes Folders With Text

When writing an article, I usually enter full data-hoarding mode. My research can span dozens of tabs, and often I need to download a bunch of files. After publishing, I simply close the tabs, but I like to keep the files, and organize them as “source materials.” My workflow results in an increasingly cluttered Downloads folder, and this app may be just what I needed to organize it.

File Architect: Organize Your macOS Folders Using… A Text File???

The idea behind File Architect may seem weird at first. There are, however, good reasons to use text files for lots of things. Other than writing, that is. But more on that in a bit.

Using File Architect

With File Architect, a folder level is marked with a vertical bar (|). If you press return and type, e.g., “example.jpeg” in the following line, it creates a file named — as you might guess — example.jpeg. To create a new folder within the first one, type another vertical bar. Let’s try an example:

Downloads
|example.jpeg
|Test.mp3
|Placeholder.dmg
|InnerFolder
||File1.txt
||File2.txt

In the situation above, you have the Downloads folder with three files inside it: example.jpeg, Test.mp3, and Placeholder.dmg. There’s also the InnerFolder folder, with the files File1.txt and File2.txt inside it. As you can see, the text document merely reflects the folder structure. A MoreInner folder inside InnerFolder would appear as ||MoreInner, and any file inside it would appear after three vertical bars.

When you click Create structure, File Architect does exactly that, within the folder you specified as a destination. After that, you can open the folders in Finder, using the List view (Command + 2) to properly place your files. Obviously, adding the files while building the structure is optional. I can see myself, as an example, using the app solely to create folder structures, and then adding the files manually.

App Limitations and Pricing

Or could, actually. Right now, the app is only available for Apple Silicon Macs. There’s a Windows version planned, according to the developer, but no word on support for Intel Macs.

Also, many of the features are only available in the paid versions. The good news is that you can test them free for seven days. Also as per the developer, however, this tier won’t be available anymore once the app leaves the beta stage. Right now, the less limited (but limited) lifetime license costs $25, with a $19/year subscription for the full version.

I really like text-based apps. In fact, I write all my articles in plain text, at first, only formatting them after they’re finished. But there are other uses for text files.

One great example is todo.txt, a method of creating cross-platform to-do lists using Markdown formatting and text files. File Architect is an app that uses a similar concept to organize folders. This way, a task that can quickly get very complex and tiring becomes something easy.