✱ Sorting Dropbox Camera Uploads
I’ve had some conversations lately around how people deal with using the “Camera Upload” feature in Dropbox, mostly around what the best way is to sort through this mountain of photos. I don’t have a super-sophisticated setup, but using Hazel is a great way to manage them with ease. If you’re not using Hazel, I don’t know what to tell you. We probably shouldn’t even be friends.
The easiest way I’ve found to do this takes a tad bit of manual setup in Dropbox. In my Camera Uploads folder I created folders named Screenshots and Videos. This will make it easier to parse those out from my actual images I care about. Then I made some simple Hazel rules to take the auto-uploaded photos and sort them out. Here’s the first:
This first rule takes all of the images and renames them based on the date created, then files them away in folders that Hazel will create and name based on the date added. Pretty simple. It’s not perfect since sometimes I’ll have to sift through folders to find what I’m looking for, but it’s far better than having a huge photo dump.
The next rule takes any videos and basically does the same thing I have set for photos.
And finally, a way to sort those screenshots that seem to pile up.
I also use a rule to trash the screenshots that are more than a month old so they don’t pile up in Dropbox, taking up that precious space.
That’s it in a nutshell. Like I said, I’ve been having some great discussion around this issue lately and figured I’d share how I deal with it. This workflow is only scratching the surface of what Hazel can do. If you have a cool — or better — way, don’t hesitate to give me a shout.