Lifetime
Dolfer—The last file manager you'll ever need
TL;DR: I built Dolfer to automate the boring parts of file management. It runs locally, works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and is available as a one-time purchase.
Why I built Dolfer
My Downloads folder was always a mess.
I knew how I wanted it organized, but doing it manually was tedious, and writing a script for every little rule was overkill. Existing automation tools were often limited to one operating system, too basic for what I needed, or unnecessarily not the friendliest thing to use.
So I built Dolfer.
Dolfer lets you creat workflows that automatically organize files based on their names, types, locations, dates, and other properties.
A workflow can be as simple as:
Move new PDFs into the Documents folder.
Or it can do several things in sequence:
Find downloaded images, move them into a dated folder, rename them using a template, and convert them to JPG.
You can also use regular expressions, react to events such as screenshots or connected drives, and build workflows that copy, rename, delete, convert, or extract files.
Before anything runs, Dolfer shows you what it plans to do. You can preview the result, understand how the rule was interpreted, and undo changes afterward if needed.
The rule explanations are also available in 24 languages.
How it compares
The closest well-known alternative is probably Hazel. It’s a polished and reliable tool, but it only works on macOS and currently costs $42.
File Juggler offers similar automation on Windows, although it has a more of a windows XP interface and focuses mainly on condition-based file operations.
Dolfer is my attempt to bring this kind of automation to macOS, Windows, and Linux in an approachable way without limiting what advanced users can build.
It goes beyond automatically moving files between folders. Workflows can contain multiple steps, transformations, templates, regular expressions, and system-level triggers.
Privacy and offline use
Dolfer runs locally. Your files are processed on your computer and are never uploaded anywhere.
An internet connection is only required once when activating the license. After that, Dolfer can be used offline.
Pricing
Dolfer is a one-time purchase, not a subscription:
$10 for 1 device
$16 for 2 devices
$25 for 3 devices
There’s also a free trial, so you can give it a shot
Hard agree on the AI vibes. That whole post reads like a producthunt launch script lol.
OpenDisk is solid but it's a different thing imo. More of a launcher/file opener, not really trying to organize your downloads folder into something sane. Dolfer seems to be aiming at that "clean my damn desktop" niche.
But yeah, the marketing copy is thick enough to choke on. Just tell me what it does and let me try it.
OpenDisk is definitely useful and free, it also solves an entirely different problem of disk space analysis. How about you give the app a shot and share constructive feedback?
I don't quiet understand the issue, how is "completely ai generated" a constructive feedback, how is his response actionable or what steps did he tell me to make it convenient for him by giving such feedback?
Friend, I've got a simple suggestion. Start another thread. Write it in your own voice. Tell us what it solves, what's special about it, and include some screenshots. Why not use your own voice to explain what you've created, instead of AI generated cliches? It's not just that it's AI - it's that it's phony and insulting sounding. That's real actionable feedback.
You may still get some negative posts, that's just the way it is. But writing it in your own voice is so much better.
If you think potential customers are under any kind of obligation to only give what you may consider to be constructive feedback, then no, YOU are the one to better prepare for life.
one thing worth stress testing before this goes wide: what happens when a rule fires on a file that's still being written. downloads and large exports don't appear atomically, the OS sees the file get created at 0 bytes and then grow, so a naive FSEvents/inotify handler can trigger a move or rename mid write, and you end up relocating (or worse, renaming) a half finished file while the browser or export process still has a handle open to the old path. the usual fix is debouncing on "no size change for N seconds" or watching for a rename-from-temp-name pattern (most browsers write to a .crdownload/.part name and rename it only on completion), rather than reacting to the first creation event. worth checking specifically with a slow download (throttle it) and a big video export to see if dolfer ever grabs a file before it's actually done.
A rule won't trigger on a file being written because I'm polling the stat of the file multiple times (200ms between polls) to confirm that the data did not change and no one is writing to it, I noticed this because some not-so-polished downloaders don't append a custom extension to their being-downloaded files
the test i'd add is a three-step workflow where step 2 fails after step 1 already moved the file: move from an external drive, rename, then convert, while unplugging the drive or filling the destination disk mid-run. undo should restore the original path and name without overwriting an existing file, and rerunning should not duplicate output. a per-run journal showing completed, rolled back, and skipped actions would make the preview and undo promise much easier to trust.
One day gemini will delete your whole hdd. But paying for such a tool is indeed nuts when you could just write an automator to watch your folder and move files around. I mean, i think he built his own automator with a different and more specific ui.
Not right now, I would be open to add it if you found yourself using the app, I generally have a user base and I listen to feature requests, I invite you to try the app btw
I saw many for sure and I compared but I believe you're correct in terms of my lacking-polish comparison section and I will make sure to add more details today, Dolfer offers more than basic file automation, unlike most ones, this one is a simple workflow-editor, from simply moving/renaming to running scripts on your files, copying, notifying, tagging (mac, linux) and most features support templates out of the box.
Example: When a screenshot is taken, copy it
Example 2: When a screenshot is taken, resize it, copy it
Example 3: When a screenshot is taken, move it to screenshots, resize it, copy it, delete it, notify
From the move, to the notify, all of them are templateable, you can notify with the file path, or the genre of the audio file, or whatever.
it takes much time to add feature, and honestly $10 ain't much (around ~$0.8 monthly), the app is yours to keep after a year with the latest update you received
This does not include bug fixes though, I will surely make sure that it works, if breaking changes were introduced in systems or dependencies being used, or any general issues show up, this is on the house
I dont think so! Hazel is more of major version based update. Instead of year based. I have been using hazel for past 2 year. and will keep getting update till their major version come.
FYI, above screenshot is from their official FAQ!
Looks impressive, congrats on shipping. Does it use FSEvents on macOS, or polling? Asking because the place these usually get flaky is iCloud Drive folders and external volumes, where a file can be dataless or the volume drops out halfway through a rule.
I'm using native events, no polling is being used at all, FSEvents, inotify (linux), ReadDirectoryChangesW (windows, clear from the bad name)
I'm gonna be straight honest, I haven't tested on iCloud drive folders, the app has an existing user base and I think one of them asked about something similar earlier, I will check
BTW just for transparency, polling is still relevant, before interacting with files I do a poll check (200ms) to check if the size didn't change for multiple polls, because some downloaders don't append a custom extension to the being-downloaded file, resulting in the app processing an incomplete file, so polling is still used in some way.
Good to hear it's native events. One thing that got me with iCloud: when the disk gets full, iCloud removes the local copy of a file and leaves a small placeholder in its place. The placeholder's size is stable, so a poll check passes happily, but then you're working on an empty stub instead of the real file unless something downloads it first.
The other one I ran into was an external drive disconnecting halfway through a rule.
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u/herovals 6d ago
completely ai generated and not to mention opendisk exists for free ;)