kokiste/smart-file-organizer

Smart File Organizer is a Python script built to clean up messy Downloads and Screenshots folders on your computer. It looks at the files in those folders, figures out which ones are duplicates, and helps you get rid of clutter without losing anything important. To find duplicates, the script first groups files by size, then confirms true matches using SHA-256 content hashing, a way of comparing files based on their actual content rather than just their name. When it finds a group of duplicates, it keeps the oldest copy and marks the rest for deletion. It also looks at when files were created and groups them into sessions based on how close together their timestamps are. Sessions with no new activity for a while, 30 days by default, get marked as candidates for archiving. Old sessions are zipped into a dated archive folder, while duplicates are deleted. Safety is built in from the start. Both deleting and archiving default to dry run mode, meaning the script only prints what it would do without touching your files until you turn those settings off. If a file is locked because another program has it open, the script skips it and logs the issue instead of crashing. You run it with a simple command after setting up a virtual environment, and you can adjust settings like which folders to scan, where archives and kept files should go, how close together timestamps need to be to count as one session, and how many days of inactivity trigger archiving. One known limitation: archiving decisions are made per session rather than per individual file. In a folder that gets new files often, like Screenshots, a session can stay counted as active indefinitely, so older files inside it may never get archived. The author plans to address this with a per file grace period in the future. This project is part of a five project roadmap the author is using to practice Python file system tools such as pathlib, hashlib, and zipfile.