File placeholders: {year}, {origin}, {capture-date}

A placeholder is a token in curly braces — {year}, {origin}, {capture-date}… — that becomes each file’s real value when the rule runs. They work in the destination boxes (the folder) and the name pattern boxes (the rename), and they’re what lets a single rule file contract.pdf into Documents/Archive/2026/March without you lifting a finger. This guide gathers the complete token table, where placeholders work (and where they don’t), the common mistakes, and the combinations that clear up the most common mess almost on their own.

The mental image that solves everything#

Keep one sentence in mind: what’s in curly braces becomes a value; the rest stays the same. Say you take invoice.pdf, last modified on the 15th of March 2026, and give a rule the destination Documents/Invoices/{year}/{month-name}. The file lands in Documents/Invoices/2026/March/invoice.pdf.

Two tokens, two swaps — and all the rest of the text (Documents/Invoices/, the slashes) stays exactly as you typed it. If a token ever shows up in the result still wearing its braces — a literal {year} in the folder name — that’s the sign it was typed in a way the app doesn’t recognize. More on that below.

The complete token table#

Tokens fall into four groups. Where something can be missing, the column says honestly what happens.

Group 1 — File date

Heads-up: this is the last-modified date — not “today” and not the creation date. For the date a photo was taken, use the capture tokens (Group 3).

The month name comes out in the language you chose inside the app, not Windows’.

Group 2 — File

{tag} only sees tags the file already had before this run — an “Apply tag” action in the same rule isn’t seen by a later {tag}.

Group 3 — Images

Here the tokens come from two sources that behave differently when info is missing. Dimensions come from the pixels themselves (they work for any image that opens, even with no EXIF); the real EXIF data can be missing.

Notice the contrast: a screenshot screenshot.png in a pattern {resolution}_{capture-date}_{camera} becomes 1920x1080_2026-03-15_ — the dimension always shows up; the camera disappears when there’s no EXIF. Media tokens work for images only; video and audio have no token today.

Group 4 — Download origin

The site a file was downloaded from, which Windows quietly remembers.

It’s empty when the file didn’t come from the web (you made it or copied it in), or when the download recorded only “came from the internet” without the exact site.

The three token languages are interchangeable#

Every token exists in the app’s three languages — the Portuguese, English and Spanish variants of the same row are synonyms and produce the same value. An American types {capture-date}, a Spanish speaker {fecha-captura}, a Brazilian {data-captura} — and all three land in the same place. Type in whichever you prefer; you can even mix them in the same box.

Where placeholders work — and where they DON’T#

The point that trips people up most: in Apply tag, what you type becomes the tag name verbatim. Typing {year} there creates a tag literally called {year}, braces and all — not the tag 2026. Placeholders are for paths and file names, not tag names.

One more detail: in a Move/Copy destination folder, the file name is appended on its own at the end. A {name} there would create a subfolder per file — use {name} in rename patterns, not the destination folder.

The most common mistake: {Year} becomes literal text#

A token only works when it’s typed exactly right. A slip like {Year} (wrong capitalization) or {year } (an extra space) isn’t recognized, so it shows up as-is in the final path, braces and all. The rule doesn’t fail with an error — it just quietly creates a folder with a strange name, like Documents/{Year}/.

Since you type tokens by hand, this slip is easy. So: always run “Simulate effect” before turning on a new rule, especially when the destination uses placeholders. It shows each file’s final path, so a mistyped token is caught on screen before it ever becomes a real folder on disk.

One last good-to-know: when renaming, if the pattern doesn’t end in a recognizable extension, the original extension is appended on its own. The pattern {year}-{month}-{name} over report.pdf yields 2026-03-report.pdf — the .pdf comes back automatically.

Six combinations worth their weight in gold#

1. Documents filed by year and month Documents/Archive/{year}/{month-name} → contract.pdf becomes Documents/Archive/2026/March/contract.pdf.

2. Photos by the date they were taken (not the file’s date) Photos/{capture-year}/{camera} → a photo taken in 2024 but copied over in 2026 uses the EXIF (2024): Photos/2024/Canon EOS R5/IMG_0001.jpg. With no camera EXIF, the camera folder disappears: Photos/2024/IMG_0001.jpg.

3. Downloads separated by source site By site/{origin} → downloaded from chase.com becomes By site/chase.com/; with no known origin, it drops straight into the base.

4. Rename with the date up front, to sort by name Pattern {year}-{month}-{day}_{name} → report.pdf becomes 2026-03-15_report.pdf (the extension comes back on its own).

5. Screenshots organized by resolution Screens/{resolution} → Screenshot.png at 1920×1080 becomes Screens/1920x1080/Screenshot.png, even with no EXIF (the dimension comes from the pixels).

6. Capture-date stamp in the file name Pattern {name}_{capture-date} → IMG_0001.jpg with a capture of 12/24/2025 becomes IMG_0001_2025-12-24.jpg. With no EXIF, {capture-date} falls back to the modified date — the stamp is never empty.

Want to go deeper on bulk names? See the guide to batch renaming files, which uses these same placeholders with a before-and-after preview.