Startup Idea : Clean my Download folder

Just sort your downloads by type or whatever suits your needs and remove the unnecessary files that you no longer need... How difficult can that be?

In OS X, I use Hazel to do just this.

http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php

How much would you pay for this?

I have a file called ''cleanup.sh'' which I run whenever my Desktop folder gets too crowded (my browser saves stuff to the desktop).

    #!/bin/bash
    MYHOME=$HOME
    MYDESKTOP=$HOME/Desktop
    
    
    echo "         _                              "
    echo "        | |                             "
    echo "    ___ | | ___  __ _ _ __  _   _ _ __  "
    echo "   / __|| |/ _ \/ _  | '_ \| | | | '_ \ "
    echo "  | (__ | |  __/ (_| | | | | |_| | |_) |"
    echo "   \___||_|\___|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_| .__/ "
    echo "                                | |    "
    echo "                                |_|    v0.1 "
    echo "  "
    
    cd $MYDESKTOP
    DIRS="Papers Code Images Music Videos Links Archives Webpages Progs"
    for dir in $DIRS; do
        mkdir $dir
    done
    
    # make the final dest dir...
    mkdir "desktop `date "+%Y-%m-%d"` "
    
    
    for file in $MYDESKTOP/*; do
        #echo "found file $file ... "
        case $file in
        *.pdf | *.PDF | *.doc | *.ps | *.ppt | *.textClipping) 
            echo "Moving $file to Papers/"
            mv "$file" Papers/
        ;;
        *.py | *.pyc | *.php | *.php4 | *.php5 | *.pl | *.java | *.c | *.js | *.m | *.csv | *.tex | *.log | *.cpp ) 
            echo "Moving $file to Code/"
            mv "$file" Code/
        ;;
        *.gif | *.png | *.PNG | *.jpg | *.JPG | *.jpeg | *.tiff | *.bmp | *.gcx | *.svg ) 
            echo "moving $file to to Images/"
            mv "$file" Images/
        ;;
        *.aiff | *.sd2 | *.wav | *.mp3 | *.ogg | *.pls ) 
            echo "moving $file to to Music/"
            mv "$file" Music/
        ;;
        *.wmv | *.mov | *.WMV | *.flv | *.avi | *.mp4 | *.mpg | *.m4v ) 
            echo "moving $file to to Videos/"
            mv "$file" Videos/
        ;;
        *.exe | *.EXE) 
            echo "moving $file to to Progs/"
            mv "$file" Progs/
        ;;
        *.webloc | *.lnk | *.desktop) 
            echo "Moving $file to Links..."
            mv "$file" Links/
        ;;
        *.zip | *.gz | *.tgz | *.tar | *.dmg | *.iso | *.iso.md5sum | *.deb | *.pkg | *.bz2 | *.rar | *.mpkg | *.torrent ) 
            echo "Moving $file to Archives... "
            mv "$file" Archives/
        ;;
        *.html | *.htm | *.webarchive) 
            echo "Moving $file to Webpages..."
            mv "$file" Webpages/
            mv "${file%.*} Files" "Webpages/${file%.*} Files"
            mv "${file%.*}_files" "Webpages/${file%.*}_files"
        ;;
        *) echo "Sorry, I don't know what kind of file $file is!"
        esac
    done
    
    #delete empty dirs
    for dir in $DIRS; do
        rmdir $dir      # will fail if files were put into it
    done

I then put all these subfolders into a folder titled `desktop YYYY-MM-DD (something descriptive)` and my life gets better (for a couple of days).

It doesn't clean things up, but at least it gets the files out of the way. I often use the labels to find stuff. Eg.

   desktop 2012-11-20 (Berlin)
   desktop 2012-12-07 (cleanup after book launch rush)
   desktop 2012-12-26 (ka-lite, web dev stuff, pre-NoBS launch)
   desktop 2013-03-01 (day at the Spundge offices)

Hope it helps.

mkdir legacy; find ~/Downloads -mtime +3 -exec mv {} legacy \;