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App for folders management

P

Pakorn

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 7, 2025
11
0
Hi everyone. I know it will raise some suggestions to improve my knowledge in Finder but let me explain.
I have files a bit everywhere between NAS, internal and external drives.
For example :

NAS
- Folder 1
- File 1
- file 2

External drive
- Folder 1
- File 1
- File 3

Internal drive
- Folder 1
- File 1
- Folder 2
- File 4


For that use case, I have quite a lot of pain using Finder and would like to know if there is a software that would give me a sort of comparison tool between NAS / External drive / Internal drive and so that i can move everything to one or two places.
For example target could be :

NAS :
- Folder 1
- File 1
- File 2
- File 3
- Folder 2
- File 4

External drive
- Folder 1
- File 1
- File 2
- File 3

Rest is removed after sync.

Thanks.
 
what file types are your "File 1" etc?

is the described process only for setting up a system state which then can be kept updated via syncs? or do you need to repeat the “consolidation” frequently?
 
Last edited:
mac57mac57 said:
It LOOKS to me like Finder shouldn't have any troubles with what you describe. What sort of issues are you having?
Click to expand...
I find it not so easy to compare all of this when you have many folders and files. Looking for something like “this is all on one screen”
 
Pakorn said:
I find it not so easy to compare all of this when you have many folders and files. Looking for something like “this is all on one screen”
Click to expand...
finding duplicates in e.g. text files is easy enough - again: what type of files you want to compare? PNGs; text, word, excel, svg, »insert binary file type of choice«,… ?
 
I second the vote for Forklift... it is superb.

You may also wish to look at CocoaTech's PathFinder, which you can use as a file manager or a full Finder replacement.

BinaryAge's TotalFinder is also an interesting alternative; a bit more troublesome to install, but quite a good product. It is a total Finder replacement.
 
Yeah, I've been using Forklift for years. It's the first program I install on a clean install.
 
Sorry but I decided to uninstall it because not only i find it expensive but it doesn't make the job as I see it (and should be natively done by MacOS).
Jut to illustrate :
Local drive with a folder named Photo Collection - photos 1,2,3...
NAS with a folder named Photo Collection - photos 3,4,.5....

What I want :
move Photo collection to NAS to same name and have photos 1,2,3,4,5,...

What the app is doing :
- Option 1 : replace folder on NAS by Photo Collection - photos 3,4,5 Definitely NO!!!!!
- Option 2 : cancel
- Option 4 : create a new folder on my NAS with Photo Collection copy - photos 3,4,5..

I mean ... folder management on MacOS is definitely a nightmare...sorry need to vent...
 
mount the NAS via e.g., SMB and copy&paste does not work for you? otherwise use rsync - if you want a GUI for that Unison
 
I absolutely do not see what the problem is here.

Open any competent two pane file manager (Forklift is my file manager of choice) and open one pane on the local folder and one pane on the NAS folder and simply drag and drop the local photos onto the NAS folder. Even Finder will do this, via two separate windows, one open on the local folder and one on the NAS folder.

As @Slartibart (LOVE that user name! Douglas Adams would be pleased!) suggests, all that is needed is to ensure that the NAS drive is properly mounted on the desktop, and both Mac OS X and macOS support this. The rest is standard Mac OS X (or macOS) file management functionality.

Is there a reason why this simple approach isn't working?
 
Perhaps the OP is asking for some kind of merge functionality, where copying folder named X into another folder that already has a folder named X will merge the contents. QSpace does this. When I drag and drop in such situation, QSpace opens a dialog alerting me to the conflict and offering me the option to merge. This is the behavior that Microsoft Explorer offers as well.

Everything is based on file name though, not the contents.
 
Pakorn said:
Sorry but I decided to uninstall it...
Click to expand...
It isn’t clear what you decided to install? ForkLift?

I think that if you carefully configure the right options, you should be able to get what you want with ForkLift.

ChronoSync likely can do the job, too. It is more expensive than Forklift, but you never have to pay for updates.
 
gregmac19 said:
I think that if you carefully configure the right options, you should be able to get what you want with ForkLift.
Click to expand...

Pakorn said:
What I want :
move Photo collection to NAS to same name and have photos 1,2,3,4,5,...
Click to expand...

That's the desire that the contents of the identically named folders should be merged. Presumably the desire is not that merging is a manual process done by the user. Can ForkLift really do this? I tested with the latest ForkLift release and didn't see a way.

When I first moved from Windows to Mac, I did miss the loss of merge functionality.
 
svenmany said:
That's the desire that the contents of the identically named folders should be merged. Presumably the desire is not that merging is a manual process done by the user. Can ForkLift really do this? I tested with the latest ForkLift release and didn't see a way.

When I first moved from Windows to Mac, I did miss the loss of merge functionality.
Click to expand...
I am having trouble understanding you. Specifically, I don’t get this statement: “Presumably the desire is not that merging is a manual process done by the user.”

I wasn’t suggesting that the OP move files around by dragging and dropping. Instead, I recommend using the “Sync to” functionality in ForkLift. I haven’t used this feature extensively, but it looks robust based on the documentation. Furthermore, I used it to perform a task similar to the one that the OP described in Post #9.
 
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svenmany said:
That's the desire that the contents of the identically named folders should be merged. Presumably the desire is not that merging is a manual process done by the user. Can ForkLift really do this? I tested with the latest ForkLift release and didn't see a way.

When I first moved from Windows to Mac, I did miss the loss of merge functionality.
Click to expand...
Unison/rsync for example allow exactly this. If the sync is needed always “one-way”, e.g., Mac -> NAS, you can just use a folder action on macOS. As a result the described folder merge/sync could be manually started, timed, or would immediately happen when a new file appears in the sync source folder.

The OP should maybe consider to Eli5 what they exactly want to acchieve - the provided info makes commenters either respond pointing to GUI file managers or sync tools. But which is it? 🤓
 
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