Building an Automated Folder Cleaner in Python to Organize Downloads Daily

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Like most developers, my Downloads folder quickly turns into an unrecognizable wasteland of installers, PDFs, ZIP archives, and random screenshots. I wrote a small background daemon in Python to automatically sort files into neat subdirectories based on extension.

The Python Cleaner Script

import os
import shutil
from pathlib import Path

DOWNLOADS_DIR = Path.home() / "Downloads"

DIRECTORIES = {
    "Documents": [".pdf", ".docx", ".txt", ".xlsx", ".csv"],
    "Images": [".jpg", ".png", ".jpeg", ".webp", ".svg"],
    "Archives": [".zip", ".tar", ".gz", ".rar", ".7z"],
    "Executables": [".exe", ".msi", ".dmg"],
    "Code": [".py", ".json", ".sql", ".env"]
}

def organize():
    for item in DOWNLOADS_DIR.iterdir():
        if item.is_file():
            ext = item.suffix.lower()
            for folder, extensions in DIRECTORIES.items():
                if ext in extensions:
                    target_dir = DOWNLOADS_DIR / folder
                    target_dir.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
                    shutil.move(str(item), str(target_dir / item.name))
                    break

if __name__ == "__main__":
    organize()
    print("Downloads organized successfully!")

I set this script to run silently on system startup using Windows Task Scheduler. My desktop and downloads folder have stayed clean ever since.

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