elastic threads

Snow Leopard Service, collect files into a new folder

Here’s a snow leopard service which lets you easily collect files into a new folder. Just select files in the Finder, right click on them and go to the service menu and choose folderCollect. The service will then pop up a dialog box asking what you want to name the folder. Then it will move all the files you had selected into that folder. Download folderCollect here. Install to ~/Library/Services. (“~” refers to your home folder).

if you don’t have a Services folder in ~/Library/, then make one Update 03/2010: Mike’s comment inspired a small change to the service.

Instead of “untitled folder” as the default name of your new folder, folderCollect now uses the name of the first file (alphabetically) you’ve selected to be collected. You’ll still get a dialog box, but this will be the default name in that box, so you can just hit enter to use it.

If you want the default name to always be the case, and no dialog box, you can double click on the service to open it with Automator. The first line of script is

property askName : true

change it to false and folderCollect will stop asking for your input…