How to sort TV episodes into season folders on Mac

What this does

Once episodes carry a season and episode tag in their filename, the natural next step is filing them into a folder per season rather than leaving an entire series flat in one place. This rule reads the same season tag the renaming rule above looks for, and uses just the season number to file each episode into a Season subfolder, “Season 1”, “Season 2”, and so on.

What you’ll build

A rule that matches video files with a season and episode tag in their name, then sorts each into a Season subfolder based on its season number.

Open the rule editor

This walkthrough happens inside FilesAutomator itself, so install it from the Mac App Store first if you have not already, then open it. In its toolbar, choose Add, then New Automation Rule.

Name the rule and choose a folder

Name it something like “Sort my episodes into season subfolders” and use Add Folder to choose your media folder.

Build the condition

Leave the top group set to “All of the following are true”.

Add a condition: Kind is a kind of public.movie, which matches every video format.

Add a second condition: Name matches pattern, then enter this pattern:

(?i)s\d{1,2}e\d{1,2}

FilesAutomator

Add the action steps

Step 1: Sort into subfolder

Choose Add Step, then Sort into folder. In “Name the subfolder with the parts below”, use Add Part, choose Text, and type “Season “, with a trailing space. Add Part again, choose Regex capture, leave its source on Name, and enter this pattern into “What to look for”, which captures just the season number rather than the whole tag:

(?i)s(\d{1,2})e\d{1,2}

FilesAutomator

Turn it on

Select Create Automation Rule, then switch the rule on. Every matching episode now files itself into the right season folder automatically.

A faster way

The template gallery inside FilesAutomator already has this rule ready to install, named Sort episodes into season subfolders.