BentoSort
A bento for your files.
BentoSort is a Mac window full of boxes, and each box knows where its files belong: a folder, your NAS, Photos, Notes, the Trash. Pick up a file, set it down in its box, and it is packed away. Neatly, safely, with a small happy bounce.
One purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases. Requires macOS 26 or later.
A bento is a lunch box with a place for everything: rice here, salmon there, pickles in their own little corner. Someone packed it in the morning, thinking of you at noon. Nothing is squashed, nothing gets lost, and opening it is a small joy.
Your files deserve the same. Receipts, holiday photos, invoices, songs: they pile up on the Desktop and in Downloads until finding anything turns into a dig. BentoSort gives every kind of file its own compartment, and makes putting things away feel less like a chore and more like packing a lunch for someone you like. That someone is you, next month.
The cloth is a furoshiki, a square of fabric a bento travels in.
Choose how many rows and columns your bento has, up to 8 by 8, and give each box a place: a folder, Photos, the Trash, an app. Name it, pick a symbol or an emoji, color it salmon, matcha or tamago yellow.
Drag anything: files from Finder, attachments from Mail, pictures from Safari or Photos. One file, a whole folder, or a handful at once.
Drop it on a box. The box moves it there, or copies it, whichever you chose for that box. Hold ⌥ to copy or ⌘ to move, just like in Finder. Changed your mind? ⌘Z.
A little copy of the BentoSort window, drawn by your browser. Drag a file from Downloads onto a box and watch the chopsticks. On a phone, or with the keyboard: choose a file, then choose its box. Hold ⌥ while you drop to copy. The files are pretend; nothing here touches your own.
Tip: hold ⌥ while dropping to copy instead of move.
Drag a file onto a box, or choose a file and then its box.
The wooden “tok”. In the app it is a setting, off unless you switch it on.
Gochisousama. ごちそうさま
Everything in its place. Gochisousama is what you say in Japan when a meal is finished: “thank you for the meal”. In BentoSort, the line under the grid says it for you when you pause after a real sorting session, ten files or more, then goes back to counting.
Every box points at one place. Most are folders, but a box can also hand your files to Photos, to a friend, to the Trash or to an app.
On your Mac, an external drive or a NAS on your network. Add date subfolders (2026, 2026/09 or 2026/09/29) and Finder tags on the way in.
Photos and videos go straight into your library, or into an album you pick. Anything else is politely refused.
A box can share: into a note, a new e-mail, over AirDrop or in Messages, whatever your Mac offers. macOS shows its own window and you finish there: pick the device, address the e-mail.
For what you are done with. It goes to the Trash, never deleted for good, and ⌘Z puts it back where it was.
Like dropping files on an app’s icon in the Dock: PDFs into your PDF editor, songs into Music, which adds them to your library and plays them.
The file stays where it is and gets the box’s Finder tags. Undo takes off exactly the tags that drop added.
Weekdays call for a big lacquered box; Sunday afternoons for a small wooden one. BentoSort keeps as many bentos as you like, called workflows, each with its own grid.
Switch with ⌘1 to ⌘9. A box can span several cells, and a workflow can keep its window on top of Finder while you sort. If you are signed in to iCloud, your workflows appear on your other Macs too, and File ▸ Export Workflow… packs one into a file for a friend.
A few ways to set up BentoSort, and the box settings that make each one work.
Every receipt that arrives, as a PDF in Mail or a scan in Downloads, goes onto one box, “Receipts 2026”, set to date subfolders by month. Two scans both called scan.pdf? The box keeps both. In spring, the whole year sits in twelve tidy folders instead of one shoebox, ready for your tax adviser.
A photographer drops the day’s folders from the memory card onto “Shoots”, a box on the studio NAS with subfolders by day. The box is set to Copy, so the card keeps its originals, and every copy is checked before the box calls it done. The ten best frames go onto a Photos box that files them into the album “Portfolio”.
Two hundred files, three months of “I’ll sort that later”. Open the workflow called “Tidy up”, keep it on top of Finder, select a handful at a time and set them down: installers into the Trash, PDFs into Documents, pictures into Photos, songs into the Music folder. Ten minutes and one cup of tea later, Downloads is empty.
The boxes of the “Archive” workflow point at shares on the NAS in the hallway: letters, contracts, the children’s drawings. When the NAS is asleep, the boxes say “Offline” and refuse drops instead of failing quietly; one click on Reconnect and macOS mounts the share again. On the second Mac, Link Folders finds every box’s folder in one go.
Songs arrive over AirDrop and land in Downloads. Drop them on the Music box: Music adds them to your library and starts playing, while the originals stay where they were until you tidy up.
Moving someone’s files is a matter of trust. This is how BentoSort earns it.
Remember when Mac apps had a sense of fun, and a small job came with a small show? We missed that. None of these details ever make you wait: the files move at full speed while the chopsticks do their thing.
With Reduce Motion switched on in macOS, the chopsticks rest: a simple fade and a checkmark show that the file has arrived.
The details, in plain words: privacy policy.
Itadakimasu.
Itadakimasu is the thankful “let’s begin” said before a meal. Get BentoSort on the Mac App Store and pack your first box.
One purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases. Requires macOS 26 or later.