How to auto-sort your Downloads folder on Mac: Shortcuts, Folder Actions or Hazel

Every Mac has the same Downloads folder: four thousand items, sorted by nothing, where the PDF you saved ten minutes ago is somewhere between an installer from 2023 and a screenshot you never needed. You can auto-sort the Downloads folder on a Mac without buying anything — since macOS 26 Tahoe, the Shortcuts app can watch a folder and act the moment a file lands. Below is the build, the two gotchas that break it, and when the older Folder Actions or a paid tool like Hazel is the better answer.

Three ways to auto-sort Downloads on a Mac

	Shortcuts folder automation	Automator Folder Actions	Hazel
Needs	macOS 26 or later	Any recent macOS	macOS 13 or later
Price	Free, built in	Free, built in	$42 once (upgrade $20)
Triggers on	Added, modified, removed	Added	Added, plus rules on age, name, contents and more
Clean up old files on a schedule	With a separate time-of-day automation	No	Yes, built in
Effort	10 minutes, some logic	10 minutes, dated app	Point-and-click rules
Best for	Most people on a current Mac	Older macOS	Many folders, complex rules

If you're on macOS 26 or later, start with Shortcuts. It's free, it's built in, and it's where Apple's automation work is going.

Build it in Shortcuts (macOS 26 and later)

The plan: a subfolder per file type inside Downloads, and an automation that moves each new file into the right one.

1. In Finder, create the destination folders inside Downloads — say PDFs, Images and Archives. Keep the list short; three folders you trust beat twelve you have to remember.
2. Open Shortcuts, click Automation in the sidebar, then the + button, and choose Folder.
3. Pick your Downloads folder. Tick Added, and tick Ignore Subfolders (more on why in a moment).
4. Choose Run Immediately and turn off Notify When Run once you trust it. Leave the notification on for the first day so you can see it fire.
5. Create a new shortcut for the automation. It starts with Receive Folder Change Summary as input.
6. Add Repeat with Each and set it to the summary's Added Files. Several files can arrive at once — unzip an archive and you get a dozen — so always loop rather than assuming one.
7. Inside the loop, add If → File Extension of Repeat Item is pdf, and in that branch add Move File → Repeat Item → to Downloads/PDFs.
8. Add an Otherwise If branch for each other folder — png, jpg, heic to Images; zip, dmg to Archives. Anything that matches nothing stays where it is.

That's the whole thing. Download a PDF and it's in Downloads/PDFs before you've switched back to the browser.

Gotcha 1: subfolders

Without Ignore Subfolders, the automation also watches folders inside Downloads — which is exactly where you're moving files to. Early Tahoe builds didn't have the checkbox, and getting an automation to act only on the top level took real workarounds; as Six Colors noted, Apple later added the box and it does the job. If you followed an older tutorial with a filter on file paths, you can delete that step.

Gotcha 2: half-finished downloads

Browsers don't write the final file straight away. Safari writes a .download file and Chrome a .crdownload file, then rename it when the download finishes. That's why matching on the final extension matters: the temporary file matches none of your rules, gets left alone, and the finished report.pdf is what gets moved. A rule like "move everything" would grab the partial file mid-download.

Clean out old downloads automatically

Sorting stops the pile growing sideways; it doesn't stop it growing. For that, add a second automation on a Time of Day trigger — say, Monday at 09:00:

1. Get Contents of Folder → Downloads.
2. Filter Files where Creation Date is not in the last 30 days.
3. Move File to a folder called To review — or straight to the Trash if you're braver than most.

Moving to a review folder rather than deleting is the habit worth keeping: an automation that silently deletes files will, eventually, delete the one you needed. Note the Mac has to be awake for a time-of-day automation to fire; one scheduled while the lid was shut runs when it wakes.

Folder Actions: the older built-in route

Before Tahoe, the built-in way to watch a folder was Folder Actions, driven by Automator. It still works on Macs that ship Automator, and it's the answer if you're on macOS 15 or earlier.

1. Open Automator → New Document → Folder Action.
2. At the top, set Folder Action receives files and folders added to Downloads.
3. Add Filter Finder Items (for example, File extension is pdf), then Move Finder Items to your PDFs folder.
4. Save with ⌘S. Automator attaches it to the folder.
5. If nothing happens, right-click the folder → Services → Folder Actions Setup and make sure Enable Folder Actions is ticked.

Automator has no If/Otherwise branching, so each destination tends to need its own workflow; it only fires on files added; and Automator hasn't had meaningful attention from Apple in years. On a current Mac, the Shortcuts version is easier to maintain.

When Hazel is worth paying for

Hazel from Noodlesoft has done this job since long before Apple did, and it's still the better tool once you outgrow one folder. Rules are point-and-click instead of If blocks; conditions cover file age, name patterns, tags and even text inside documents; and cleaning up old files or emptying the Trash is a checkbox, not a second automation. Hazel 6 is $42 once for a single user ($20 to upgrade from an older version), with free updates for that major version — no subscription.

The honest split: one Downloads folder with three file types is a Shortcuts job. Five watched folders, renaming invoices by date and filing them by client is a Hazel job.

Or don't sort at all: group the view

If what you really want is to find things, not move them, Finder can do it without any automation. Open Downloads, then View → Use Groups, and View → Group By → Kind or Date Added. Files split into labelled bands — PDFs, images, archives — and nothing on disk changes. Pair it with sorting by Date Added and the newest download is always at the top of its group.

It's also the right first step if you're unsure what folders you'd even create: group by Kind for a week, see which bands you actually open, and build the automation around those.

Frequently asked questions

Why don't I see a Folder option in Shortcuts automations? Mac automations arrived in macOS 26 Tahoe. On macOS 15 Sequoia or earlier, the Shortcuts app has no Automation section — use Folder Actions instead.

Will the automation run on files that were already in Downloads? No. It reacts to changes after you create it. To sort the backlog, run the same shortcut once by hand on the existing files, or select them in Finder and move them yourself.

Can it sort by where the file came from? Not directly — the folder change summary gives you the file, not the site it was downloaded from. Hazel can match on more attributes; for most people, sorting by type is enough.

Does this work on iCloud Drive folders? It's designed for folders on your Mac. If your Desktop and Documents sync with iCloud, test a rule there with notifications on before trusting it.

For the other triggers worth setting up once you're here — time of day, Wi-Fi, apps opening — see our guide to Mac automation with the Shortcuts app, which also covers where automation stops being the right tool.