4 ms·

I'm in a similar boat, and I'll mention one "weird trick" that has helped me. What used to happen was I'd download, say, an Ubuntu image, use it, and then say

I'm in a similar boat, and I'll mention one "weird trick" that has helped me. What used to happen was I'd download, say, an Ubuntu image, use it, and then say "... I might need this again" and leave it there. Then a week goes by, I've forgotten its there. Sorting by Date Added its now piled under 10 other items. The empire of dirt grows... The trick? A Trash that automatically empties items older than 30 days. MacOS has this, at least. (Note, this is a rolling empty; not an "empty everything every month" kind of deal). Now I just delete those "I might need this..." files. I know I can grab it from the Trash if I need it again, which I've done a few times. Most of the time, I didn't need it, and so it gets thrown out as it should. The effect is two fold. Obviously there's less junk in ~/Downloads in general. But that has the knock-on effect that it is now less daunting to go through and sweep up ~/Downloads. Empirically, my ~/Downloads, ~/old.Downloads, etc. used to be filled with easily 400 files and folders each. Now? My current ~/Downloads is at 76 items after two years. And that's currently at my peak; I'm about to go through and clear out about 20 of those things. Which is easy to do, compared to trying to face a mound of 400 files with names like "TEST.txt"...

amenod 8y ago
This is similar to /tmp/ on Linux (well, Debian at least). On each reboot it gets emptied which means I put there everything that I will probably not use after this session. Suspend / wake cycle doesn't empty /tmp/ directory, but just knowing it will get emptied sooner or later is enough.
faster 8y ago
I use Classifier to manage file in my Ubuntu Downloads directory; it moves files into subdirectories by extension. I run it daily from cron, and my backup script runs it before backing up. https://github.com/bhrigu123/classifier https://github.com/bhrigu123/classifier
dublin 8y ago
Win10 makes it easy to automatically empty the Recycle Bin and Downloads (but sadly, not other locations). One major PITA is that Firefox does not use the standard Downloads folder/directory, but has its own. It's configurable, of course, but I never remember until I've already got a zillion things in it, and I try to run everything with a minimum of customization.
- mcovey 8y ago
  Firefox defaults to remembering where you last downloaded a file for each site. This is useful for things like image sharing sites when you always want to drop pictures into your pictures folder, but you can disable it and always use the default downloads folder. In about:config, set 'browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite' to false (you may have to create the preference), set 'browser.download.useDownloadDir' to true, and set 'browser.download.lastDir' to your preferred location. More info - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/887248 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/887248

amenod 8y ago

This is similar to /tmp/ on Linux (well, Debian at least). On each reboot it gets emptied which means I put there everything that I will probably not use after this session. Suspend / wake cycle doesn't empty /tmp/ directory, but just knowing it will get emptied sooner or later is enough.

faster 8y ago

I use Classifier to manage file in my Ubuntu Downloads directory; it moves files into subdirectories by extension. I run it daily from cron, and my backup script runs it before backing up. https://github.com/bhrigu123/classifier https://github.com/bhrigu123/classifier

dublin 8y ago

Win10 makes it easy to automatically empty the Recycle Bin and Downloads (but sadly, not other locations). One major PITA is that Firefox does not use the standard Downloads folder/directory, but has its own. It's configurable, of course, but I never remember until I've already got a zillion things in it, and I try to run everything with a minimum of customization.

mcovey 8y ago
Firefox defaults to remembering where you last downloaded a file for each site. This is useful for things like image sharing sites when you always want to drop pictures into your pictures folder, but you can disable it and always use the default downloads folder. In about:config, set 'browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite' to false (you may have to create the preference), set 'browser.download.useDownloadDir' to true, and set 'browser.download.lastDir' to your preferred location. More info - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/887248 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/887248