Be lazy! Let Maid clean up after you, based on rules you define.

Maid keeps files from sitting around too long, untouched. Many of the downloads and other files you collect can easily be categorized and handled appropriately by rules you define. Let the maid in your computer take care of the easy stuff, so you can spend more of your time on what matters.

Think of it like the email filters you might already have, but for files. Worried about things happening that you don't expect? Maid doesn't overwrite files and actions are logged so you can tell what happened.

Maid is inspired by the Mac OS X shareware program Hazel. This tool was created on Mac OS X 10.6, but should be generally portable to other systems. (Some of the more advanced features such as downloaded_from require OS X, however.)

Your rules are defined in Ruby, so easy rules are easy and difficult rules are possible.

Users:

• Participate in beta testing
• Report an issue (bug or feature request)
• Read through the wiki
• Even just share a link to Maid :)

Developers:

• Complete an issue (easy ones are labelled, and issues for future releases are grouped by milestone).
• Working on an issue? Please leave a comment so others know.
• See the Contributing guide

• OneThingWell: Maid - August 29th, 2012
• Maid – Paresseux mais ordonné! (FR) - August 30th, 2012
• Ruby5 Podcast #302 (at 2:45) - August 31st, 2012

More... (tweets, etc)

• OS: Mac OS X, Ubuntu
• Ruby: 1.8.7, 1.9.3 (preferred)

(Other Ruby versions and OSes may work, but are not officially supported. Contributions are welcome, however.)

First, you need Ruby:

• Mac OS X: Ruby 1.8.7 comes preinstalled.
• Ubuntu: Ruby is not preinstalled. To install Ruby 1.9.3: sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1 # (sic) (Interested in a package?)

Then, you can install via RubyGems. Open a terminal and run:

sudo gem install maid

At a later date, you can update by running:

sudo gem update maid

If you decide you don't want Maid installed anymore, remove it:

sudo gem uninstall maid

NOTE: This does not remove any files under ~/.maid or crontab entries. Please remove them at your convenience.

• Having multiple Ruby versions installed can confuse things. If you're a Ruby developer, you may prefer to just gem install maid with your preferred setup. Ruby 1.9.3 is recommended.
• Older packages of Ruby for Ubuntu may not automatically add the RubyGems bin directory to your $PATH. Double check your settings.

Maid rules are defined using Ruby, with some common operations made easier with a small DSL (Domain Specific Language). Here's a sample:

Maid.rules do
  rule 'Old files downloaded while developing/testing' do
    dir('~/Downloads/*').each do |path|
      if downloaded_from(path).any? {|u| u.match 'http:https://localhost'} && 1.week.since?(last_accessed(path))
        trash(path)
      end
    end
  end
end

If you're new to Ruby and would prefer a more traditional for loop, you can also do this:

Maid.rules do
  rule 'My rule' do
    for path in dir('~/Downloads/*')
      # ...
    end
  end
end

Before you start running your rules, you'll likely want to be able to test them. Here's how:

# No actions are taken; you just see what would happen with your rules as defined.
maid clean --dry-run # Synonyms: -n, --noop

To run your rules on demand, you can run maid manually:

maid clean                    # Run the rules at ~/.maid/rules.rb, logging to ~/.maid/maid.log
maid clean -r some_rules.rb   # Run the rules in the file 'some_rules.rb', logging to ~/.maid/maid.log

So, for example, if this is some_rules.rb:

Maid.rules do
  rule 'downloaded PDF books' do
    dir('~/Downloads/*.pdf').each do |path|
      move(path, '~/Books')
    end
  end
end

This is the command to test, as well as some sample output:

$ maid clean -nr some_rules.rb
Rule: downloaded PDF books
mv "/Users/ben/Downloads/book.pdf" "/Users/ben/Books/"
mv "/Users/ben/Downloads/issue12.pdf" "/Users/ben/Books/"
mv "/Users/ben/Downloads/spring2011newsletter.pdf" "/Users/ben/Books/"

For more DSL helper methods, please see the documentation of Maid::Tools.

Once you get a hang for what you can do with Maid, let it do its stuff automatically throughout the day. You'll find your computer stays a little tidier with as you teach it how to handle your common files.

To do this, edit your crontab in your tool of choice:

crontab -e

...and have it invoke the maid clean command. The --silent option is provided to keep this from emailing you, if desired. A log of the actions taken is kept at ~/.maid/maid.log.

Example for every day at 1am:

# minute hour day_of_month month day_of_week command_to_execute
0 1 * * * /bin/bash -li -c "maid clean --silent"

Both Mac OS X and Ubuntu support callbacks when folders are changed, and that may be a forthcoming feature in Maid. That said, I find cron to take care of most of my needs.

For a sample rules file, run:

maid sample

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