Quickly move files by typing where you want them to go.

The fastest workflow for reorganizing thousands of files.

• Move files to a folder by typing its name
• Fuzzy folder name completion
• Create folders on the fly
• AI suggestions for where to move files
  • Looks at destination folder (configured scope) structure as well as a history of recent moves
  • Looks at file names and contents
• Works with any file manager via a global hotkey
  • Experimental desktop automation with a flag quick-move --from-clipboard which triggers Ctrl+X or Ctrl+Shift+C and reads the clipboard to get the selected files
• File manager integration (e.g. Nautilus, Nemo, Thunar, Dolphin, etc.) for a window-local hotkey
  • Tested with Thunar, should work with others, as long as you can set a custom action to run quick-move with the selected files as arguments
  • AutoHotKey wrapper script to integrate with Windows Explorer
• Limit destination suggestions to a specific folder
  • currently hard-coded to the home directory, or if present ~/Sync (default Syncthing folder)
• Move history
  • Undo recent moves from a list
  • Open the destination folder of a move
  • Default destination input to the last used folder (or include it as a suggestion)
  • Option to clear the history

If you encounter any bugs or issues with the app, please report them in the Issues section of the project on GitHub.

Known issues:

• Pressing Enter will always accept a suggestion, even if you want to create a new folder, or use the currently typed path. You can only create a new folder if nothing matches.
• If you want to move files to the root of the configured destination scope, right now I guess it'll say "Please specify a destination directory." I haven't needed to do this yet, and haven't tried it.
• (If you press the shortcut in Thunar with nothing selected, it will consider the current directory as the selected item. This is not a bug, but it may be unexpected. There doesn't seem to be a way in Thunar to disable the custom action if nothing is selected, while still allowing it on folders.)
• Experimental: quick-move --from-clipboard
  • Linux: may go haywire and spam Ctrl+Z instead of pressing Ctrl+X once; this may just be a bad interaction between xdotool and Synergy, though.
  • Windows: When launched via quick_move.ahk, it forces the window to be on top, but dialogs don't go on top of the main window, so you can't access them, and you can't close the main window until they're closed, even though you can't see them. (You can use Escape, though.)
  • The error message when no files are selected is not very user-friendly.

Copyright © 2025 Isaiah Odhner

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3. See LICENSE.txt for more information.

• Clone the repository, and cd into it.
• Create a virtual environment with python -m venv .venv
• Activate the virtual environment with source .venv/bin/activate or on Windows .venv/Scripts/activate (without source)
• Install dependencies with pip install -r requirements.txt
• Install quick-move with pip install -e .
• Run the app with quick-move
• Optionally, expose the CLI globally (i.e. outside the virtual environment) with link_cli_globally.sh; this is useful for testing integration with file managers, or global hotkeys
  • This script is tested on Linux, as well as Windows with Git Bash. It may not work when run from a different shell, such as PowerShell or Command Prompt on Windows.

A VS Code launch configuration is included for debugging. Press F5 to run the app in debug mode.

The app is built with PyQt6. Qt Designer is used to scaffold the UI with drag and drop. It edits .ui files, which are then loaded by a widget class. I hear there's also a way to compile .ui files to Python code.

To avoid version conflicts, you may want to install pyqt6-tools (which includes Qt Designer) outside of the virtual environment. This may need to change if it's used for compiling .ui files in the future, but for now it's not included as a dependency, and the version of pyqt6 is not set to match it.

Run tests with:

pytest -vv

or continuously with:

pytest-watch -- -vv