Every version, and what changed

• Tidy opens on macOS Sonoma again. Since 2.8, on Macs running macOS 14 the app quit the moment you opened it, without showing anything: it registered the Finder menu a moment too early. A customer with an iMac Pro reported it and sent the crash report that made it possible to fix, and it was tested on macOS Sonoma before release. If you're on Sonoma and Tidy wouldn't open, download this version from tidymacapp.com: the automatic update can't reach you, because the app never got far enough to look for it.

• A safety net for AI agents. Before you let Claude, Cowork, Codex or any AI work in a folder, protect it: Tidy keeps an instant copy that takes no space. Afterwards it tells you in words what it moved, renamed, deleted and changed, and undoes it in one click: what was deleted comes back, what was moved goes back where it was, and the earlier version of anything changed is kept alongside. What the AI created stays, and nothing current is overwritten. Protect a folder from the new card in the Protect group or with a right-click in the Finder → “Tidy: Protect this folder”, and the card warns you when an agent is open and no folder is protected. Tested with a real Claude agent that deleted 6 files and moved 18: all 25 came back, byte for byte.
• Rename reads more formats, as Sven Owsianowski asked: saved emails (.eml, with the subject, sender and date), calendar invitations (.ics, the event and its date), contacts (.vcf, the person and their company), books (.epub, title and author), LibreOffice spreadsheets and presentations (.ods, .odp), macro-enabled and template Office files (.docm, .xlsm, .pptm, .dotx, .ppsx…) and screen recordings (.mov, .mp4): it reads the text shown in two frames of the video. Everything it reads is searchable too.
• Card headers no longer get squashed. In German, when duplicates appeared, the “In den Papierkorb (0)” button squeezed the title into “Duplik / ate”, the header grew, and the move arrows no longer covered the icon; Sven recorded it as a GIF. Now, if the button doesn't fit beside the title, it moves to its own row. Checked in all five languages.
• The Finder tag says what it does: it goes on what Tidy moves or renames — not only on what it moves, as it said — and applies from the moment you turn it on; what Tidy touched before stays untagged.

• To the Trash from the dry run. While reviewing what's pending, each row now has — next to the show-in-Finder button — a trash icon, for what you no longer need, instead of filing it. It goes to the macOS Trash, is never deleted, is written to the history, and an “Undo” appears below the list. Sven Owsianowski asked for it from his ideas page: “while reviewing, several times a day I realise I don't need this anymore”.
• Keyboard shortcuts for stage mode and for renaming. Each offers two combinations (⌃⌥B or ⌥⌘B for stage mode, ⌃⌥R or ⌥⌘R for rename) and “No shortcut”, which is how they start: Tidy doesn't take a global shortcut unless you ask, a lesson from when ⌥Space collided with Alfred. The stage-mode one turns it on and off without opening Tidy; the rename one opens the review window and, if there are no suggestions, asks for them. Sven's idea.
• Minimum age in hours. Each rule could wait “1 day” or more before touching a file; now also “1 hour” and “6 hours”, so a download can sit for a while before the rule files it. Two people asked for it the same week, Wayne Porter among them.
• The review-names window no longer says “Nothing to review” while it reads. When renaming from the Finder menu, the window opened empty with that text and the names arrived a few seconds later; Sven fell for it two or three times, thinking he hadn't passed the files correctly. Now, while Tidy reads, it says “Reading your files…” with the same bar as the panel.
• The jump when hovering over a card. Sven recorded it as a GIF: when the move arrows appeared, the panel gave a small vertical jump, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. The arrows' animation dragged along any other size change happening at that instant; now it animates only the arrows. It couldn't be reproduced here, so if you still see it, say so.

• Suggestion 2 of 5: in the rename window and in the panel card you can now move forward and back through the names proposed for each file, and see how many there are. They all come from the text Tidy read in that file; none is made up. It replaces the “another name” button from 2.8.2, which only went forward and eventually went dark: Sven Owsianowski summed it up with a GIF — “that was the last one, take it or start over”.
• The big switch no longer turns off search. It paused what Tidy tidies on its own — which is what it does — but the panel also dimmed and blocked search, scan, text extraction and stage mode, none of which ever depended on it. Whoever turned automation off so nothing would be touched lost exactly what they had bought. Now only the Organize group dims, and the label says “Auto-tidying paused” instead of “Paused”.
• The ⌥Space panel no longer says “I've read every file” when it isn't true. The deep read takes 300 files per pass; if some were left out, it now says how many and offers “Read 300 more” — and each pass carries on with the next ones, instead of re-reading the same 300 most recent every time, which is what it did. And the search card, at zero, said the index “fills up when Tidy files or renames” — which led a buyer to believe that to search he had to let Tidy reorganize his Mac. It now says first that it fills up as you search, and which folders it looks in. The “Search” button lives in the card header, visible without expanding it, with the shortcut written next to it.
• “Tidy older files…” on an added folder moved immediately; “Organize now” always asked first. Now both ask the same way, and with dry run off they offer “See the plan first”. “Delete rule” asks too: it was the only irreversible action that didn't.
• Text you can read. The explanation under each stage-mode switch, each rule's summary (“PDF, DOC → Documents”), “shows the plan without moving anything” and a dozen other small lines sat in a grey at 1.8 to 2.7 contrast — the minimum for text is 4.5. And for VoiceOver, the eleven Downloads rules, the five stage-mode switches and six pickers had no name: it said “switch, on” eleven times in a row. Each one now says its own.
• One word per thing. “Search” is now only for the search: Rename now and Collect folders say “Suggest”, Duplicates “Check”. Six cards had one name in their header and another when hidden (“Data in plain sight” became “Privacy audit”); now it's the same. “Leave these alone” quotes the actual Finder menu item, “Tidy: Keep off this”, instead of a paraphrase. And “freed” becomes “to the Trash”, which is where those gigabytes are until you empty it.
• The welcome screen now starts with searching inside your scanned PDFs, which is what most people come for, and no longer says “up and running” before you enter your code. The button row in Rename now takes two lines, because it didn't fit in German or French. Extract text no longer shows a green check when it extracted nothing. And zero “file(s)” remain: the last five bracketed plurals have their singular.
• And a lock that wasn't properly shut: in some cases a fresh install ended up activated without a code, because it took its own first launch as “previous use” and inherited a license that didn't exist. It now inherits only when there is real use — files organized — which only a licensed copy can produce. Nothing changes for anyone who bought.

• Tidy could delete its own search index. If for any reason it could not open it — the Keychain key unavailable at that instant, another process holding the file — it carried on with an empty index in memory and later wrote that over the good one. One stumble took away the text of every document it had read, silently. Now an index it cannot open is never touched: it retries, and if there really is no way in, the file is set aside and a new one is started. It is never deleted. And the app's own automated tests no longer share a folder with your index, which was one way of triggering it.
• In the dry run you can now select all, clear all, and see how many of the total are ticked. Hovering a row reveals a button that shows that file in the Finder, so you can look at it before approving. Both existed in the rename window and were missing exactly here — the last checkpoint before anything moves. Sven Owsianowski spotted it with twenty files in front of him.
• The search card now says how many documents Tidy has read. The number existed, but only inside the ⌥Space panel and only after a search, so someone who had just installed Tidy had no way of knowing whether it had read anything. It now also says what it does not do: it reads inside the folders you watch, not your whole disk.
• The include-subfolders switch now has its name written next to it. It was a small unlabelled switch at the end of each folder's row, explained only by hovering over it — which is no help if you don't know there is anything to hover over. Two people said the same day that they couldn't find it.
• With stage mode running, its switches dimmed to say “these can't be changed right now”, and a switch that is ON at 50% reads as OFF. Now only the labels dim; the switch keeps its colour and tells the truth.
• No more “1 results”, “1 documents read” or “1 days”: the six texts that put the number first now have a singular form, in all five languages. It came from a screenshot of Thomas's own.
• The Shortcuts and Siri actions were in English in all five languages. They don't go through the app's own translation system — macOS looks them up in a different file — which is why they had been left behind.

• Stage mode now really hides the menu bar. 2.8.2 promised it and did not deliver: it used a route that does nothing on macOS 27. It now asks the system through the same door System Settings uses, and it is verified live both ways: the bar leaves when stage mode goes on and returns when it goes off. The first time, macOS will ask you to allow Tidy to request it; that permission is for this alone.
• “Tidy: Allow again” said it removed the protection but did not when the file was protected by the folder containing it. It now clears the file's own mark, and when the folder is what protects it, it says so instead of pretending it did something.

• The Finder commands are now “Tidy: Rename”, “Tidy: Keep off this” and “Tidy: Allow again”, so they appear together instead of scattering alphabetically among other apps' services. The third one is new: remove the protection from the same place you applied it.
• In the rename window each file now shows which folder it came from, and clicking its name reveals it in the Finder. Useful when two files have similar names and live in different places.
• A new button asks for another name when the proposed one does not convince you. It never repeats itself: each click looks further into the text Tidy read from the page, and when the text runs out the button switches off instead of going in circles.
• ⚠️ This version announced that stage mode could hide the menu bar, and in this version it did not: the switch was there, the bar stayed. It was properly fixed in 2.8.3, the same day. Sorry for announcing it before testing it with the installed app.
• Finder tags always came out grey no matter which colour you picked, and the colour picker was in English in all five languages. Both came out of auditing the app's translations: the colour was read from a setting that was never written.
• Three hidden cards showed their internal name in lowercase instead of a translated one, and the hidden-cards list sat in the middle of the panel instead of at the end. Sven Owsianowski spotted both.

• The Finder right-click menu appeared in Spanish even when Tidy was set to another language. It now reads “Mit Tidy umbenennen” in German, “Renommer avec Tidy” in French and “Renomear com o Tidy” in Portuguese. Sven Owsianowski reported it: the text was being translated in the file macOS uses for permissions, not in the one that menu actually reads.

• Tidy is ready for macOS 27 “Golden Gate”: it was tested end to end on the beta — renaming, scanner, Smart Eject, search, notices — plus the full signing and notarization cycle. If you upgrade your Mac there is nothing to reinstall or set up again. One detail: the first text read after upgrading takes about 25 seconds, once; after that it is instant again.
• Content search is up to three times faster in folders with large photos: on the test Mac, a folder of 24-megapixel HEIC files went from 51 to 14 seconds. Tidy reads the photo at a reduced size for OCR and searches on several threads at once.
• The panel is no longer a list of seventeen cards: it is now seven groups — Organize, Name, Find, Protect, Your Mac, Activity and Settings — that collapse and reorder with the arrows on the icon, just like the cards inside each one. Nothing was removed and nothing was hidden: new cards are born collapsed, and the ones you already had stay as you left them.
• Right-click in the Finder: on a file or folder you now get “Rename with Tidy” and “Keep Tidy off this”. Rename opens the Review desk, a window where you see the proposed name next to the current one and approve them one by one. Tidy still renames nothing you have not approved.
• Siri and Shortcuts: three Tidy actions — rename what is new, search by content and protect a file — can be used from Shortcuts and asked of Siri, and chained with what you already have.
• Identical content: Tidy finds two files that say the same thing inside even when their names or sizes differ, because it compares the text it already read, not the name. You choose which one stays; the other goes to the Trash, never deleted, and anything marked “keep Tidy off this” is not even looked at.
• “Keep Tidy off this”: mark files or folders that Tidy will never move, rename or trash — not through rules, not in the automatic sweep, not as duplicates. It earned its place when the Desktop became watchable: that is where the things nobody wants moved live.
• Finder tags: if you turn it on, whatever Tidy organizes gets a tag in the color you choose, so you can spot it at a glance without opening the app. It ships off, because tags are yours; it adds without removing the ones you already had, and can be cleared from everything at once.
• Payment dates: when Tidy reads a bill and finds the due date, it shows it to you and offers to create the reminder. It creates nothing on its own, and if the date is not clear it proposes nothing: a misread date is worse than none. Reminders permission is requested only when you press the button, and only to write.
• A rule can now file into another folder, outside the watched one: your iCloud Drive Downloads, an external disk, whichever you pick in the chooser. Daniel Distler, a buyer, asked for this. The folder is chosen, never typed, and if it disappears or goes to the Trash the rule pauses and tells you.
• Small fixes: “Move this rule up” now puts it in one click above the rule that was shadowing it (it used to climb one place per click); an iCloud Drive folder is called “iCloud Drive” and not by its internal name; and if Apple Intelligence is off, the field for writing a rule in words no longer vanishes: it says what is missing.

• Smart Eject now moves the installer to the Trash from any folder you are watching, not just Downloads. If you keep your .dmg files on the Desktop or in a folder of your own, they go to the Trash once the app is installed. Outside those folders Tidy touches nothing.
• Smart Eject used to say it «cleans up» the installer. Tidy does not clean up anything: it moves it to the Trash, and now it says so in all five languages. The verb matters because it describes what actually happens to your file.
• When a notice leaves it no longer just fades: the card breaks apart from left to right into sparks shaped like the app's mark, over about a second. Close it with a click and it goes in half that time, and with "Reduce motion" turned on there are no sparks. It is decoration: it changes nothing about what Tidy does with your files.

• The Flow Rules card said it organizes "your Downloads folder", which read as if Tidy only worked there. It now names the folders it actually organizes, and says you can add any others you want.
• Watching other folders has been there since 1.10, under Flow Rules › "Watch another folder…". It lived inside the card, and two people bought Tidy without ever seeing it. That was the text's fault, not theirs.
• When something can't be done, it now says so: a folder that can't be watched explains why; "Rename now" counts the ones it couldn't; the scanner's rotate says if it didn't apply; and launch at login records it if macOS refused. Those four used to fail silently.
• The Desktop can now be watched. Add it like any other folder and your rules organize it; screenshots stay with Auto-Drop. As always: it only touches what arrives after you add it, and everything can be undone.

• Content search was quietly emptying itself: when Tidy filed a document, it lost the text it had already read from it. Now the text travels with the file.
• Your index rebuilds itself as Tidy reads and files again. You can also fill it in one go with "Also read the files it hasn't opened yet", inside the search.
• What does not change: deleting a document still deletes its text from the index and from Spotlight. That was right and it stays.

Four versions in four days. Three of them were reports from the person this cycle is named after, fixed the same day.

• The scanner shows a live outline of the document before you shoot, and can build a multi-page PDF from several shots.
• Upright scans, for real this time. 2.5.1 counted letters to decide which way was up; a page upside down produces the same letters as noise. Now it checks for real words against the system dictionary, and when it cannot tell — a crumpled handwritten note — it doesn't guess: a rotate button sits next to the last scan.
• Extract text. Drop a PDF or image on the card and get a .txt next to the original, with on-device translation when macOS offers it. Nothing is ever overwritten.
• The search shortcut can be changed or turned off. Tidy was taking ⌥Space away from Alfred without a way out; reported by an Alfred user, fixed the next day, confirmed by him.
• Dark mode for the panel and the extractor window.

One fix, found twenty-four hours after 2.5 shipped by the person this cycle is named after.

• iPhone scans come out upright. Continuity Camera always hands the Mac a landscape frame, so holding the phone vertically left the document lying on its side. Tidy now works out which way is up on its own: it reads the text at each rotation and keeps the one that actually reads. Nothing to configure, and a photo with no text is left exactly as it was rather than guessed at.

Four things, and one of them needed your iPhone.

• Scan with your iPhone camera. A new card opens a viewfinder straight into your iPhone's camera. The shot lands in Downloads and Tidy names it after what it says — the photo never touches the phone: no camera roll, no iCloud. The first time, macOS asks for camera access; the image never leaves your Mac.
• Clicking a notice undoes its run. When Tidy tells you it moved or renamed files, hovering now shows Undo and one click brings that exact batch back. Notices that only inform no longer pretend to be buttons.
• Rules can filter by origin. A new rule field matches where a file came from: the website it was downloaded from, or the app that delivered it — WhatsApp, Mail, AirDrop. macOS records this when files arrive; nobody was using it to tidy.
• Sharper names in "Rename now". When Apple Intelligence is available, proposals name what the document is instead of quoting its first six words — and a built-in check guarantees every word in the name exists inside the document. If one doesn't, Tidy falls back to the classic method. Never invents, never translates, never deforms.

Two things the same person found within a day of 2.4 shipping.

• Collecting folders has its own button now. Every other card that does something has a red button in its header, and this one didn't — the action was a text link buried in the description. If a gesture repeats on five cards, the sixth doesn't get to invent its own.
• Reordering cards works when some are hidden. The arrows moved a card past its neighbour in the full order, not the visible one. If that neighbour was hidden, the card swapped places with something you couldn't see and nothing appeared to happen.

Two of the three new things here were asked for by the same person, who sends ideas and marks them "not homework". They were homework.

• Collect loose folders. Downloads fills up with folders as well as files — "Version 1", "Test", "Project XY" — and Tidy never touched them, because moving a folder moves everything inside it without looking. Now you can ask it to show you what it would collect. Tidy looks inside each one, proposes the ones where nothing has changed in a number of days you choose, and tells you how many items each holds. You tick the ones you want. It never proposes a folder that one of your rules uses as a destination, and one click undoes the lot.
• Stage mode is yours to configure. It used to be all or nothing. Now you choose what it hides: Desktop icons, widgets, the Dock, or any combination. It arrives set exactly as it behaved before, so if you liked it as it was, nothing changes. The Dock option sets it to hide automatically — still there when you reach for it, out of the screen you're sharing.
• Your licence carries your name. Your access code now has your email address signed inside it, and Tidy shows it at the bottom of the panel. It also travels in the support email, so you never have to remember which address you bought with. Codes issued before today keep working exactly as they did.

And two fixes that matter more than they sound:

• The search shortcut said "Espacio" in every language but Spanish. Since 2.2. A user spotted it in German and thought it was something small on his machine; it was on every English, German, French and Portuguese install. It now says Space, Leertaste, Espace and Espaço.
• Notices tell the truth, and there are fewer of them. If a batch failed completely, Tidy used to show a green tick reading "Plan applied · 0 files". It now says what actually happened. And a run of six files used to fire seven notices that overwrote each other — six interruptions, one message you could read. They're grouped into one.

• The dry run has checkboxes. Untick what you don't want; what you untick stays where it is and stays on the list.
• Cards you never use can be put away, and a row at the bottom brings them back.
• The floating notice waits for you — the timer stops while your pointer is over it.
• The privacy audit looks for three more things, including passwords sitting in plain text files.
• A rename that only touches the spaces, leaving capitals and accents exactly as they were.

• Search inside your files from any app with a keyboard shortcut.
• French and Portuguese, translated and read by native speakers.
• The content index is encrypted on disk.