VaultSort 5.8.0-beta.0

What's New

• AI Connections (Mac). A new page, Settings › AI Connections, lets AI apps such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor work with your files through VaultSort. To get started, make a connection. Then click Set up Claude Desktop or Set up Cursor to add it to that app (VaultSort keeps a backup of the app's settings file), or copy the command shown for Claude Code. A connection can see nothing until you give it a folder, and it only ever sees the folders you give it. It can never reach your Library, system folders, the Trash, other users' files or the Vault, and you can't give it your whole startup disk or the Users folder. You can take folders back or remove a connection at any time. If VaultSort isn't running when an AI app needs it, it opens in the background. AI Connections aren't available on Windows yet.
• What an AI app can see. A connected AI app can list your folders and search them by name, type, date and size. It can read what's inside files only in folders where you turn on Contents, which is off by default. It can read text, code, CSV, JSON, HTML, PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Before the AI app sees a file, VaultSort replaces passwords, keys and tokens, payment card numbers, IBANs and US Social Security numbers with labelled placeholders, unless you turn on Show sensitive details for that connection. Files that are themselves secrets, such as private keys, .env files, credential files and password-manager exports, are never read. Detection can miss things, and the AI app is told so. When sensitive details are shown, each read that contained them is listed under the connection.
• Let an AI app organize, then undo it. An AI app can propose a plan to move, rename or copy files, create folders, and move items to the Trash. VaultSort checks every step and then makes exactly the plan it checked. A plan never deletes anything permanently and never replaces an existing file. If a file changed after the plan was checked, the plan is refused. VaultSort asks you before applying a plan of more than 50 changes or a plan that moves items to the Trash. Don't Allow is the default, and a question left unanswered counts as no. Each applied plan appears in Recent Activity as "AI connection: ", and you can undo it from there. Clear History keeps these entries. Plans also work on USB drives and SD cards formatted as exFAT or FAT32. Applying plans is free for 5 plans and then needs Premium. Searching, reading, previewing and undoing are always free.
• AI apps and Space Saver. A connected AI app can see how much Space Saver could free in its safe cache categories. It sees sizes only, never file locations. It can then ask you to clean them. Nothing is cleaned until you click Clean in VaultSort. Without Premium, each clean counts as one of Space Saver's 3 free cleans.
• AI apps and Scheduled Jobs. A connected AI app can list your scheduled jobs and their history, and turn a job off. It can also do a dry run of a scheduled job or a saved Advanced Organize job, which shows what the job would do without changing anything. It can ask to turn a job on, delete a job, make a new job or change one it made, and each of these waits for your approval in VaultSort. An AI app can't run a job immediately. Making or changing a job this way needs Premium. Jobs made by an AI app only move and rename files, so every run can be undone. They never use the Trash or replace files, they look only at files directly inside their folders, and they can't use a folder that another job already uses. In Scheduled Jobs they show Made by , with "edited by you" added once you change them. An AI app is never told the names of folders outside the ones you gave it.
• AI apps know their limits. A connected AI app is told what it can and can't do through VaultSort. When you ask for something it can't do, such as finding duplicates or securely deleting files, it can tell you to do it in VaultSort.
• Organization Recovery Key (Business). A business can now recover files, folders and Vaults that its people encrypt with a security key. It needs no server, and VaultSort never holds a key. An administrator sets up the organization under Security Keys › Organization, prints a recovery sheet for the firm's safe, and gives the team the organization's policy file to import. From then on, everything a member's computer encrypts with a security key can also be opened with the organization's own security key or the printed sheet. Files encrypted before joining can be added from the same section. Password-encrypted files can't be recovered this way, and the Encrypt card says so. Creating, managing or joining an organization needs a Business licence. Recovering files never does. (Once a computer has joined, the files and Vaults it encrypts open only in VaultSort versions that support organization recovery. A Vault made before joining is converted the next time it's unlocked. The join dialog shows the version required, so update every computer before joining.)
• A simpler Smart Categorize. The wizard now has three steps: Folders, Categories, and Preview & save. Suggested categories now come from your own files, not from the insides of apps and software folders, which used to produce categories like "Packages" or "Schemas". Larger folders get more suggestions. You can edit and delete saved category sets. When you delete one, VaultSort names the jobs that use it. Files that don't clearly fit a category stay where they are by default, instead of going to an "Uncategorized" folder. You can stop a preview at any time, and a stopped preview is never run.
• Drop files to Secure Delete. When you drag files over the VaultSort window, Secure Delete now appears beside Organize and Protect. Dropping files doesn't delete them straight away. They go to the same confirmation as Secure Delete from Finder or File Explorer. You can drop up to 50 items at a time, and VaultSort tells you if any were left out.
• Tables and find in Vault notes. In Edit view, tables appear as cells you can type in, with Tab to move between cells and buttons to add a row or column. A find bar above the note works in every view, including from ⌘F or Ctrl+F. When every selected file is a Markdown or text file, Make a note appears in the selection toolbar. It copies the text into new notes and keeps the original files.

Improvements

• Secure Delete asks about locked files first. Securely deleting a file that is Locked, read-only or on a read-only disk used to fail file by file with unclear errors. Files restored from a Windows backup often arrive Locked. Duplicate Finder, Secure, Large File Finder and Storage Map now check first, including inside folders, and ask whether to Unlock and Delete, Skip Them or Cancel. Anything VaultSort unlocked but didn't delete is locked again afterwards. If VaultSort's helper is still waiting for your approval in Login Items, VaultSort tells you and offers Open Login Items, Delete Without the Helper or Cancel. When files still can't be deleted, the reason is given in plain words. After 5 failures in a row, VaultSort stops and tells you how many files it didn't try.
• Deleting the original after encrypting is checked up front. When you've chosen to delete the original after a YubiKey encrypt or decrypt, or after password encryption, VaultSort checks the originals before it starts, while you're still there. If an original is Locked or read-only, you can choose Unlock and Delete After, Keep It or Cancel. Password encryption now tells you when an original couldn't be deleted, instead of reporting success.
• Turning on a scheduled job waits for its schedule. Creating, editing or turning on a scheduled job no longer runs it immediately. It runs at its next scheduled time, or when files arrive in a watched folder. To run a job now, use Run Now. The option when creating a job now reads Turn on after creating.
• Manage your scheduled jobs without Premium. Without Premium, you can still open Scheduled Jobs to turn your existing jobs on and off, delete them, and see their history. Making and editing jobs, and Run Now, still need Premium.
• Run All tells you when a job didn't run. Previously, a job that Advanced Organize's Run All skipped, either because a rule needed fixing or because its folder couldn't be reached, showed as a green "0 files". It now shows as Not run, with the reason. In Dry Run, warnings that stop a run are listed first and marked Stops the run:.
• Apps are handled as single items. Advanced Organize, Smart Categorize and scheduled runs no longer look inside apps, packages, or software folders such as node_modules and .git. On a Mac, Advanced Organize and scheduled runs now list each app or plug-in as a single item in every preview and every run, so a rule can move or rename an app as a whole. If a rule would copy an app, the app is left where it is, and the preview says so. A rule that checks file size before deciding leaves apps alone, because an app's size can't be judged from its folder. The preview says when this happens. (Folders such as Downloads may now show apps in a job's preview where they didn't before. Check the Dry Run of jobs that cover folders containing apps.)
• Auto Organize: change the folder in place. Click Change… to pick another folder without leaving Auto Organize. Cancelling the folder picker no longer clears your choice.

Bug Fixes

• Advanced Organize's runs now match its preview. Running a job from Advanced Organize and running it on a schedule or when files arrive could give different results. Now they match:
  • Some date rules that never matched in scheduled and watch runs now match, as the preview always showed.
  • .ts files count as code, not video.
  • A rule that renames and then moves a file moves it under its new name.
  • A rule that copies a file and then moves, renames or trashes it acts on the original, not the copy.
  • Numbered renames ({counter}) show their real numbers in the preview, and the numbers go to the same files when the job runs.
  • A file-path rule that a scheduled run can't evaluate is now refused before the run, and Scheduled Jobs shows the reason. Before, the rule was silently treated as not matching.
• Excluded folders stay excluded. Advanced Organize's Dry Run, and the run that followed it, could include and move files from a job's excluded folders. Scheduled runs could miss an exclusion written in different capitals or, on Windows, an exclusion of the job's own folder. Watched jobs moved files that arrived inside an excluded folder. All of these now leave excluded folders alone.
• Overlapping folders are processed once. A scheduled job whose folders overlap, for example a folder and a folder inside it, could act on the same file twice and rename it twice. Each file is now handled once.
• Moving apps works. Moving an app with a rule failed and left a temporary folder behind. Advanced Organize's own run also refused apps as "changed since preview". Apps now move as a whole, and an app is never put in place of something that's already there.
• USB drives and SD cards. Files moved or copied onto FAT32 or exFAT drives were given the current date, so rules like "older than 30 days" treated them as new. They now keep their modified date. Renaming files with accented names on exFAT drives failed, and on FAT32 drives such files were slowly copied and deleted. They are now renamed directly. If VaultSort quits partway through a move, any empty placeholder file it leaves behind is normally removed the next time it starts.
• Renames can always be undone. When the second step of a two-step rule failed and VaultSort couldn't reverse the first step's rename, that rename was left without an undo record. It now stays in History & Undo and the run reports it. A run in which every file failed but something on disk still changed can now be undone.
• File names are used exactly as they are. A file name containing characters such as $& could come out mangled in rename and move templates. A template that produced a . or .. folder could put files outside the folder you chose. That is now refused, with a warning in the preview, and the same applies to category folder names.
• Scheduled jobs no longer replace files without your permission. A scheduled or watch job that sorts into category folders with "replace existing files" could replace files even when Allow overwrite actions during scheduled/watch automation was off. Such jobs are now turned off and marked as needing attention. To turn one back on, tick that option in the job.
• Space Saver cleans only what a category describes. Categories with an age limit, such as Application Logs ("older than 7 days"), could clean whole folders, including today's crash reports. They now remove only matching items older than the limit. A folder with anything recent in it isn't offered. The size shown is what a clean frees.
• Smart Categorize no longer crashes or freezes. Clicking "Use N categories" could crash VaultSort, and a preview of tens of thousands of files froze the app and couldn't be stopped. Both are fixed.
• Vault fixes. In the file preview, the Make a note and Send securely buttons couldn't be clicked, and the window buttons covered the file name. If you move a note that's open into another folder, it now closes and VaultSort tells you where it went.
• Windows: on-device AI models install reliably. Installing an AI model on Windows could fail at the last step on a busy computer.
• Windows: on-device AI libraries are signed. The image libraries used by on-device AI features on Windows are now signed, like the rest of VaultSort.
• VaultSort can't be used to run other programs' code. Another program on your computer could start VaultSort in a mode that ran that program's own code with VaultSort's permissions, including Full Disk Access. That mode is now switched off on Mac and Windows.