fyle

When coming home from a long vacation, one of the things you want to do is import the pictures from your camera or phone. Along with pictures from other holidays, it can get difficult to navigate through them to find a specific one. In this regard, fyle comes as a simple means of sorting large amounts of files into separate folders created according to different criteria.

The application comes in a pretty light package and you don't even have to go through a setup process for it to properly run. System resources used are amongst the least of your worries. However, make sure to run it with administrator privileges, or you risk getting stuck in a splash screen. This doesn't mess around with system settings, but the application needs special clearance to automatically create folders.

A note of advice is to try out the application in a folder and with files you don't need, because it can accidentally move everything around and ruin either icon arrangement, shortcuts and more. There's no documentation to get you out of sticky situations, but the following might shed some light.

There's a built-in file explorer constantly displayed so you select the folder where all sorted items are deposited. You need to forget anything you consider sorting means, at least while using the application, because here it's used as a fancy term for the move function.

Only a few methods can be used, like search, selected and quick sorting. They're not entirely different and rather difficult to understand and put in motion. The process mostly consists of moving a selection of files to a new or existing folder.

Filter options are shallow, with only the quick method letting you choose different presets. As such, you can set the application to create new folders according to year, month or exact creation date, document type and size, attributes which are gathered from files in the directory you're currently in.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that fyle is only a poor interpretation of a neat idea. The core function is to make it easier to sort different files in new folders automatically, but the overall process, starting with the hard time accommodating and ending with the confusing and redundant result, leaves a lot more to be desired.