mharper / ScreenShotClean

Removes screen shots more than a week old from your Desktop folder

ScreenShotClean

by Michael Harper [e-mail]

Created 15-Dec-2009

DISCLAIMER

This contraption deletes files, so USE/MODIFY AT YOUR OWN RISK. You have been warned.

WHY DID I DO THIS?

My pal Chris Sexton wrote this immensely useful utility called "captured" which I use constantly. The down side is that I end up with a PILE of screen shots in my Desktop folder (and thus on my desktop). I figure these fancy computers are capable of cleaning up after themselves (or Chris, in this case), so I wrote a script that gets fired up by launchd and deletes all screen shots that are a week old every day.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Installs scripts into ~/Library/Application Support/ScreenShotClean and one plist file into ~/Library/LaunchDaemons.

TO INSTALL:

$ ./install.sh

TO UNINSTALL:

$ ~/Library/Application Support/ScreenShotClean/uninstall.sh

TO MODIFY THE FREQUENCY OF DELETION:

You can change the frequency at which launchd runs the screenshotclen.sh script by modifying the plist file in ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.standalonecode.screenshotclean.plist.

Set the integer value for StartInterval to the number of seconds you want the process to sleep (currently set for 24 hours):

<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>86400</integer>

Of course, you'll have to restart the launchd job for these changes to take effect:

$ launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.standalonecode.screenshotclean.plist

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.standalonecode.screenshotclean.plist

TO MODIFY THE AGE OF FILES TO DELETE:

The file age defaults to 7 days and is specified in this command in screenshotclean.sh:

/usr/bin/find ~/Desktop -name "Screen*.png" -mtime +7d -delete

Take a look at the man page for "find" and you can experiment with different values.

FOR THOSE PAYING ATTENTION

This is actually a nice, simple template for setting up a launchd daemon to "do something" on a periodic basis.