Tidy up

Storage overview

The storage view shows what fills a drive. Open it in the sidebar under Storage & duplicates.

• Choose the drive at the top right. The round arrow button (Analyze again) reads it anew.
• The bar splits the used space into Your files, Apps & games, Development, Windows (protected) and Other.
• Below it, a map shows the biggest folders. A click zooms in, a double-click opens the folder in a tab, and the path above the map leads back. Grey areas with a lock are protected – Tern Files never deletes or moves anything there.

Next to Overview are the pages Duplicates, Large files and Not opened in a long time (files from 1 MB that nobody used for a year). If Windows doesn't record when files are opened, the last page is called Not changed in a long time. In these lists you can tick files and click Move to Recycle Bin, or use Show in folder.

Files that are only online in OneDrive take no space on the drive, so they count as 0 bytes here. The overview is free; the other pages need Pro after the trial.

Free up space Pro

Free up space quickly on the storage overview lists safe suggestions and how much each one frees:

• Old downloads – not used for more than 90 days.
• Build folders in projects – bin, obj, node_modules, target, .venv, __pycache__ and others, only inside real projects. They can be rebuilt anytime.
• Duplicates – leads to the duplicates page.
• Recycle Bin – entries deleted more than 30 days ago.
• Update leftovers – opens the Windows storage settings; Windows measures and removes them itself.
• Temporary files – older than 7 days.

Click View to see the files with checkboxes. Build folders, temporary files and old recycle bin entries start ticked; downloads you pick yourself. Move to Recycle Bin can be undone in the history; the space is freed once you empty the recycle bin. For build folders and temporary files, Delete permanently frees the space at once after asking. In the recycle bin list, Delete entries older than 30 days and Empty Recycle Bin both ask first and can't be undone.

Windows, programs and system files are locked, and nothing under AppData or Program Files is ever suggested.

Duplicates Pro

Duplicates finds files with exactly the same content, even if their names differ. Open Storage & duplicates › Duplicates. The search starts on its own across All drives; at the top right you can pick a single drive instead.

Tern Files compares sizes first, then a checksum of the start and end of each file, and finally the full content. Files under 1 KB, system folders and files that are only online are left out – nothing is downloaded.

• Groups are sorted by how much space they save. Whole folders that exist twice appear as one group.
• Each copy shows Location, Modified and Last opened and is marked Keep or Remove. A click switches it. One copy is always kept.
• Keep automatically sets the marks for you: the file in the most important place (Documents › Pictures › Downloads), the oldest, the newest or the one with the shortest path.
• Include similar photos also finds resized or slightly changed photos. They are never marked for removal.

Then click Move to Recycle Bin – you can undo that in the history – or Replace with hard links. With hard links, the copies on the same drive become one shared file and the space is freed at once. After that, changing one changes all of them, and this step can't be undone in the history.

Batch rename Pro

Batch rename gives many files new names in one go, with a live preview before anything changes.

1. Select several files and press F2, or right-click › Rename …. This also works for search results from different folders.
2. Under Rules · top to bottom, click Add rule: Replace (text or regular expression), Insert text, Insert date (date taken, created or modified, in a format like YYYY-MM-DD_), Number, Case, Remove or replace characters, Change extension or Cut out.
3. Check the column New · live preview. Each rule has a coloured dot, and the part of the name it creates has the same colour.
4. Click Rename N.

Drag rules to change their order; a click on the dot switches a rule off. Conflicts are solved automatically – a taken name gets “(2)”, invalid characters are replaced – and the row says so. All files are renamed in one step: if one fails, nothing changes, and one Ctrl+Z undoes everything. Save as template keeps your rules for later under Template.

By content (local AI) reads each file on your PC and suggests names for invoices, contracts and bank statements, like Invoice_2026-09_Hetzner_149,00€.pdf. Untick rows that should keep their name. With the AI model it also names other documents.

Rules Pro

Rules tidy up on their own: if a file lands in a folder and matches, then do something with it. Open Rules in the sidebar and click New rule, or start from one of the Templates, such as Screenshots by month or File invoices.

• If: pick the folder and add conditions with +: file type, name or content contains …, older than …, larger than … and AI category. A click on a chip changes it.
• Then: numbered actions – Rename, Move to, Copy to, Add tag, Recycle bin and Quick action. Placeholders such as {Date:YYYY-MM-DD}, {Year}, {Month}, {Sender}, {Amount}, {OriginalName} and folders like {Documents} go in with a click and work on every PC.
• When: On a new file, Daily at a time, or Only manually. With Ask first – on for new rules – a notification offers Run or View.

Applies to N files right now shows old and new paths first; Run now runs the rule. Every run can be undone in the history. Rules keep running in the tray with all windows closed; Pause rules in the tray menu stops them.

Rules only touch files directly in the folder, once they have stopped changing for 3 seconds; unfinished downloads, hidden and system files stay untouched. If two rules would move files back and forth, one is paused. Sender, amount and AI category need reading contents.

AI tidy-up Pro

AI tidy-up looks at a messy folder – typically Downloads – and suggests where each file belongs and what it should be called. Nothing is moved or renamed before you confirm.

1. Right-click a folder › Tidy up with AI, or right-click an empty spot in a folder › Tidy up this folder with AI. In the launcher, Tidy up a folder with AI takes the current folder or Downloads.
2. Tern Files reads the files directly in that folder on your PC: text, scans and photo data.
3. Check the cards. Each one shows a target, the reason and the new names with was: … below. Untick cards or single files you don't want.
4. Click Apply N proposals.

It recognises invoices (named after sender, month and amount), contracts, bank statements, screenshots (filed by month), photos (by the date they were taken) and installers of programs that are already installed – those are suggested for the recycle bin. It prefers folders you already have, such as Tax 2026\Invoices, and adapts the year. The card Uncertain – please decide yourself starts unticked.

All moves and renames form one history entry, so one undo brings everything back; the recycle bin part is a second entry. Save as rule turns the accepted patterns into rules for this folder that ask before they run.

The common cases work without the AI model. The model helps with files the built-in recognition doesn't understand.

The local AI model

The local AI model makes plain-language search, AI tidy-up and names by content smarter. It is optional: reading contents, amounts and the built-in recognition of invoices, contracts and bank statements work without it.

1. Open Settings › AI (local).
2. Switch on Use the AI model. The download starts right away and shows its progress. The size is on the button next to it, for example Download (3.4 GB).
3. Wait until it says Downloaded and checked. If the download was interrupted, Continue picks it up where it stopped.

The model is Phi-4-mini-instruct by Microsoft, downloaded once from Microsoft's page on Hugging Face. With a graphics card that has at least 4 GB of its own memory you get the graphics card variant (about 3.4 GB), otherwise the processor variant (about 4.9 GB). The page shows which one and why. You can cancel the download at any time, and every file is checked after loading. Remove deletes the model again.

After the download everything runs offline on your PC: no account, no fees per request, and no files, texts or search questions go to the internet.

The features that use the model – plain-language search, AI tidy-up and names by content – need Pro after the trial.