Building https://floxtop.com, a native Mac app that organizes and rename your files with reliable AI.
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then suggest the right folder for you.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It works in 50 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and with images (OCR and object recognition), PDFs, Microsoft Office, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types.
For messy folders anywhere on the Mac, Floxtop can help.
Building https://floxtop.com, a native Mac app that organizes your files with reliable AI.
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then suggest the right folder for you.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It works in 50 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and with images (OCR and object recognition), PDFs, Microsoft Office, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types.
Next, rename files based on their content (e.g. 123023dfawjher.pdf → finance_chart_fy26.pdf).
For messy folders anywhere on the Mac, Floxtop can help.
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then moves it to the right folder for you.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It works in 50 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and with images (OCR and object recognition), PDFs, Microsoft Office, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types.
For messy folders anywhere on the Mac, Floxtop can help.
Floxtop never creates or changes your folder structure. You decide where files should live by creating categories. A category has two things:
1. A short description of what kind of files belong there
2. A specific folder on your Mac as the destination
When you drop unsorted files into Floxtop, it looks inside each file, understands what it’s about, and compares it with your categories. Instead of picking a single place, Floxtop suggests the five most likely destinations, ordered by confidence.
Nothing happens automatically:
- Files are never moved on their own
- You review the suggestions and decide what gets moved
- If a file doesn’t clearly belong anywhere, it stays untouched
Floxtop helps you decide where things belong — the final action is always yours.
Side project: A native macOS app in Swift that runs locally and uses AI to clean and organize files by moving them into the best-matching folders. No backend or accounts. https://floxtop.com
Full-time: C++ work on nearby connectivity (bluetooth) for embedded / industrial devices (factory equipment). Deep stack, hardware constraints, long lifecycles, high reliability.
Non-web work feels very different: stronger constraints, slower but deliberate releases, and bugs are much more expensive. There’s a lot of interesting software being built far away from HTTP and browsers.
That's neat, using Apple Foundation Models or something else? I'm very curious about how it's determining folder matches (I need to do something for images that are already classified/tagged via FastVLM) in iOS.
Not Apple Foundation Models — unfortunately they’re not capable enough (yet) for understanding content and matching it to folders.
I’m using SBERT-style embedding models for the semantic matching, which works very well in practice.
For non-text content, the app also analyzes images (OCR + object recognition) using Apple’s Vision framework. That part is surprisingly powerful, especially on Apple Silicon.
> I need to do something for images that are already classified/tagged via FastVLM
What’s the concrete use case you’re targeting with this?
Classifying real estate / property images. Also using Apple Vision which ain't half-bad for something on device and feeding that metadata along with what FastVLM returns into Foundation model to turn into structured output - trying to see how far a I can push that. But feels pretty limited/dated in term of capabilities vs lead edge models.
I’ve seen a huge advantage in running everything fully local and private. Not sure if that fits your use case, though. Nearly 90% of Floxtop users choose the app mainly for that privacy focus.
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then moves it to the right folder for you.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It works in 50 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and with images (OCR and object recognition), PDFs, Microsoft Office, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types.
If you have messy folders anywhere on your Mac, Floxtop can help.
This looks very interesting and I appreciate the pricing model and lack of cloud. It wasn’t clear from the site, but is there a check all moves prior to execution function? Undo?
There is no automatic execution — nothing is moved without your confirmation.
Floxtop suggests the top 5 destination folders where a file could best belong. You stay fully in control: you can choose one of the suggestions, move files individually or in bulk (Move All), or select a completely custom folder location at any time.
If you change your mind, you can Undo per file or use Undo All to revert the entire operation.
1. A Homebrew option isn’t available yet, but it’s something I’m open to exploring. Homebrew doesn’t currently support payments or license handling for paid apps, so Floxtop doesn’t fit perfectly into their workflow. For now, it’s available via direct download from the website.
2. Multi-language support. Yes — I’m actively working on this. Which languages would be most important for you? That helps me prioritize.
3. Moving files to mounted folders (e.g., Google Drive)
Great suggestion. I’ll look into this, as supporting mounted cloud folders could be very helpful for many users.
Hi HN, Floxtop is a native macOS app that organizes files and images by their content — not just their names. It runs fully offline on Apple Silicon, with no servers, no cloud, and no data leaving your machine.
Problem: My Downloads and Desktop folders would fill up with PDFs, screenshots, and random files, making cleanup and finding the right file frustrating and time-consuming.
Solution: Floxtop uses Sentence Transformers (SBERT) to embed document text and metadata, plus OCR and object recognition to read images. It groups and classifies files by semantic similarity — all locally, so your sensitive files (finance, medical, personal, etc.) stay private.
Current version: Supports 30+ file types including images, Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), PDFs, EPUBs, Markdown, CSV, and more. Parsing and classifying 50 files takes around 17 seconds. It integrates with Finder (right-click > Organize with Floxtop), Quick Look + thumbnails, and includes keyboard shortcuts for a fast workflow. Currently, Intel Macs are not supported and it only works with English-language files.
I launched an early beta ~3 months ago, Fallinorg (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44932375), and have since built out more features based on user feedback.
I’d love your feedback on classification workflows, missing features, pricing, usability, and potential bulk operations or integrations.
Happy to answer questions and share implementation details!
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then moves it to the right folder with a single click.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It already works with images, Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) PDFs, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types (30+) in English. Next I’m adding multi-language support.
If you have messy folders anywhere on your Mac, Floxtop can help.
Correct — right now Floxtop classifies images based on text only. It does not yet classify based on visual objects.
If automatic object-based sorting (e.g. detecting pets, buildings, etc.) would be useful for you, I’d be interested to hear your use case.
Regarding privacy: everything runs locally on your Mac. No files or metadata are uploaded anywhere. The only network request is from Sparkle to check for updates. If you prefer, you can disable update checks and Floxtop will have zero network activity.
If you have questions or want to share feedback, you can reach me anytime at floxtop@proton.me.
This is already useful. If you do wind up adding image classification, first, I'd like it distinguish photos, screenshots, and graphics. Then, I'd like broad categories, like people, places, animals, memes, etc. Base case is I want sort out my downloads since I generally download something and then not bother putting it where it belongs or deleting it.
It would also be handy if, in addition to moving the items, it could tag them via Finder tags/xattrs.
Hi HN,
Floxtop is a native macOS app that organizes files and images by their content — not just their names. It runs fully offline on Apple Silicon, with no servers, no cloud, and no data leaving your machine.
Problem: My Downloads and Desktop folders would fill up with PDFs, screenshots, and random files, making cleanup and finding the right file frustrating and time-consuming.
Solution: Floxtop uses Sentence Transformers (SBERT) to embed document text and metadata, plus OCR to read images. It groups and classifies files by semantic similarity — all locally, so your sensitive files (finance, medical, personal, etc.) stay private.
Current version: Supports 30+ file types including images (with OCR), Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), PDFs, EPUBs, Markdown, CSV, and more. Parsing and classifying 50 files takes around 17 seconds. It integrates with Finder (right-click > Organize with Floxtop), Quick Look + thumbnails, and includes keyboard shortcuts for a fast workflow.
Currently, Intel Macs are not supported and it only works with English-language files.
Thanks for your interest! Currently, Floxtop is not available on the Mac App Store. I’m considering it for the future, but the high cut Apple takes makes it challenging for an independent app like this.
Out of curiosity, is your preference for the App Store mainly convenience (updates, trust, purchasing), or something else?
If you’d like to be notified when this feature becomes available, you can subscribe to our newsletter — it’s linked in the footer of our website or by sending an email to floxtop at proton.me
It looks inside each file to see what it’s about, then suggest the right folder for you.
Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing leaves your computer. No clouds, no servers.
It works in 50 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and with images (OCR and object recognition), PDFs, Microsoft Office, ePubs, text, Markdown, and many other file types.
For messy folders anywhere on the Mac, Floxtop can help.