Group media files (photos, videos, etc.) into folders by date. This is useful when you have thousands of mixed files exported from phones, cameras, or cloud services.

group_files_by_date.py

import os
import shutil
import re
from datetime import datetime

# Set your folder path
folder_path = "path/to/target/folder"

# Date patterns to extract from filenames
patterns = [
    r"_(\d{8})_",              # _YYYYMMDD_
    r"_(\d{8})\d{6}",          # _YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
    r"(\d{8})_\d{6}"           # YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS
]

# === Step 1: Move files to YYYY_MM_DD folders ===
files = os.listdir(folder_path)

for file in files:
    file_path = os.path.join(folder_path, file)

    if file.startswith("._") or not os.path.isfile(file_path):
        continue

    # Try extracting date from known patterns
    date_str = None
    for pattern in patterns:
        match = re.search(pattern, file)
        if match:
            date_str = match.group(1)
            break

    # Fallback: use last modified date
    if not date_str:
        mod_time = os.path.getmtime(file_path)
        date_str = datetime.fromtimestamp(mod_time).strftime("%Y%m%d")

    folder_name = f"{date_str[:4]}_{date_str[4:6]}_{date_str[6:8]}"
    folder_full_path = os.path.join(folder_path, folder_name)
    os.makedirs(folder_full_path, exist_ok=True)

    shutil.move(file_path, os.path.join(folder_full_path, file))
    print(f"Moved {file} to {folder_name}/")

# === Step 2: Merge folders with < 3 files into YYYY_MM ===
all_folders = [
    f for f in os.listdir(folder_path)
    if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(folder_path, f)) and re.match(r"\d{4}_\d{2}_\d{2}", f)
]

all_folders.sort()

for folder in all_folders:
    folder_path_full = os.path.join(folder_path, folder)
    items = os.listdir(folder_path_full)

    if len(items) < 3: 
        year_month = "_".join(folder.split("_")[:2])
        target_folder_path = os.path.join(folder_path, year_month)
        os.makedirs(target_folder_path, exist_ok=True)

        for item in items:
            src = os.path.join(folder_path_full, item)
            # 🔐 Skip macOS ghost/metadata files
            if item.startswith("._") or not os.path.isfile(src):
                continue
            dst = os.path.join(target_folder_path, item)
            shutil.move(src, dst)
            print(f"Merged {item} from {folder}/ into {year_month}/")

        os.rmdir(folder_path_full)
        print(f"Removed empty folder {folder}/")