How to organize screen captures taken in macOS to a monthly or daily directory automatically

Today, I will tell you about how to organize screen captures taken in macOS to a monthly or daily directory automatically.

When I take a screen capture in macOS, the image file will be saved in a specific directory (default: /Users/your_name/Desktop). If you take a lot of screen captures over a long period of time, the large number of image files saved in that directory. It will make it difficult to find the image file you want.

To solve that problem, I introduce a way to automatically save screen captures in a monthly or daily directory.

About my solution

In macOS, the screen capture will be saved with a filename having a date and time like sc 2020-03-07_15.36.39.png. So I will organize the screen captures using their filename. In this way, they will be organized like the following directory structure.

$ tree .
/your/path/
└── 2020
    ├── 01
    │   ├── sc__2020-01-01_132830.png
    │   └── sc__2020-01-22_222346.png
    ├── 02
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-11_163716.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-16_140132.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-16_190945.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-16_191009.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-16_191703.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-16_192223.png
    │   ├── sc__2020-02-22_131052.png
    │   └── sc__2020-02-22_134907.png
    └── 03
        ├── sc__2020-03-01_101256.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-01_195937.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-01_200003.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-01_200033.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-01_214710.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-03_183331.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-03_183737.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-05_213054.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-05_213957.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_130956.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151354.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151433.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151650.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151715.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151746.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_151749.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_152524.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_152639.png
        ├── sc__2020-03-07_153639.png
        └── sc__2020-03-07_153639_2.png

How to that?

There are two steps in my solution. I will tell you about each step.

Step1: Create a script to organize screen captures (Python 3.x)

In the first step, create a script that organizes screen captures in a monthly or daily directory. Now I introduce the script runs at Python 3.x.

Save this script to any directory in your local machine. And replace the following values to match your environment.

SC_DIR: This is a path to the directory where screen captures are saved.
SC_OUT_DIR: This is a path to the directory where organized screen captures are saved.
DIR_TYPE: This is a switch to way to organize. If you use MONTH screen captures will be organized in a monthly directory, or if you use DAY they will be organized in a daily one.

This script also renames the file name of screen captures like following.

• replace half-space to underscore
• remove period
• remove brackets (that used when the captures are taken at multi-display)

Step 2: create Automator workflow

In the second step, create a workflow in Automator.

The kind of workflow is Folder Action. Please specify the directory where screen captures are saved. This directory is the same as the value of SC_DIR .

The first action is Executing Shell Script. Please specify the following command.

python3 /your/path/to/script/organize_mac_screen_captures.py

The second (the last) action is Notification. This is optional action but if you set this action, you can immediately notice that the screen capture has been organized.

This topic is a partial excerpt and translation of the following blog post (my blog in Japanese):

Mac で撮ったスクリーンキャプチャを自動で月別または日別のディレクトリに振り分けるようにしてみた - michimani.net