How to copy/paste last file added to folder only when hotkey is pressed?

Questions & Suggestions
4

Hey Dave,

Tom’s solution works perfectly if the files in question are modified in the order they are added to the source directory.

Over the years I’ve had semi-regular situations where I’ve modified a file in situ and created a false-positive, so I prefer to use the actual date-added date of the file whenever possible.

AppleScriptObjC gives us that ability since the advent of Mavericks (although Yosemite and later are easier).

Getting the Last-Added File in a Folder (Directory)

I’ve altered the main part of the script to perform your task:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# User must specify source and destination directorys.
tell application "System Events"
   set sourceFolderPath to POSIX path of disk item "~/Downloads/"
   set targetFolderPath to POSIX path of disk item "~/test_directory/Destination_Directory/"
end tell

set theSortKey to (current application's NSURLAddedToDirectoryDateKey)
set lastAddedFile to its filesIn:sourceFolderPath sortedBy:theSortKey returningSingleItem:true
set lastAddedFile to alias POSIX file lastAddedFile
set targetFolderPath to alias POSIX file targetFolderPath

tell application "Finder"
   duplicate lastAddedFile to targetFolderPath without replacing
end tell

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--» HANDLERS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But remember – the handlers from the complete script are necessary to make it work.

The script is set to fail if a file with the same name already exists in the destination folder, although this is customizable of course.

-Chris

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