Hazel: Automated Organization for Your Mac

By Gazmaz:
I have been racking my brain as to which app I could review next, well I was messing about in my system preferences when I spotted an App called Hazel sitting there looking all lonely and to be perfectly honest not doing a great deal. Now before you think I go around buying apps and then forgetting them this App was purchased in a Mac bundle when I first switched from the world of windows, and haven’t really looked at it since, so I thought why not review Hazel, I might learn something about the App at the same time.

So what is Hazel well it’s not a one trick pony which is what I thought it was when I first got the Application. Now this sits in your System Preferences pane as it’s a utility app but this App does some thinking for you if setup correctly.

The main app interface has three panes or tabs firstly I’ll talk about the Info portion.

Well, as it sounds, this gives you information about the Application the version mine is currently 2.2.1, it tells you the status of the App when to check for updates or to make it Automatic view the Log and even to uninstall the application if you need that option.

One of the basic features of Hazel is as a cleanup application, do you find your hard drive storage disappearing and suddenly realize that you trash box has just got too full, well you can set Hazel to periodically clean your Trash, not that difficult you may think, however this can be set Hourly Daily or weekly. Now for those of you who use the trash and a backup, yes you know who you are, I’d advise that you don’t use it that way, but if you really can’t bear not to don’t use Hazel to clean the trash up, but stick with me for the review because Hazel does a lot more.

Now continuing in the delete mode you can set the app to clear the files securely or just use the normal delete mode, now I bet there are times you’d wished you’d deleted something securely well set this parameter and forget it. You can also ask Hazel to Keep the Trash Can under a certain size, now just think about all those large video podcasts you’ve watched and deleted, see how this is becoming really useful.
Another clever little trick Hazel has up its sleeve, is the ability to delete Applications, now this actually makes one of my other apps redundant, but you can set Hazel to delete Apps and it will go and look for the associated files for that app and clean those associated from your system also, you’ll find these options on the Trash Tab.

We now come to the real clever part of the application, and this has so many possibilities I’m sure I won’t give you all of this applications potential. The final Tab’s name that I’m going to look at is Folders.

Takes deep breath, at first viewing this looks so innocuous it’s unbelievable, but the real clever piece in this section are the rules that you can create. So what do I mean by rules well lets say you have a folder that you keep putting files that you receive on a regular basis, that could also mean your desktop.

Let me give you a quick example here, say I downloaded a GIF file into my downloads folder, I’m sure if your anything r like me your downloads folder becomes very messy with all sorts of stuff, well I could set a rule so when a .GIF or .JPG or any other picture format file appears into the downloads folder that is gets moved into say a Pictures folders then I could review that file later, that why I’ll know all the pictures I’m downloading for a project will all be found in my Pictures Folder.

Now you may create the situation in which that Pictures folder has become full of pictures (or any other type of file you’ve decided to put there) and your looking at a mass of just numbered and or oddly named files. well why not setup another rule which color codes those files to make it easier to see when the files have been downloaded or if you’ve already opened a file. Well you can set a rule to do just that just for that folder, you can also set the rule to say send a growl notification on files that were not opened in the let’s say the last 6 weeks.

Now you could if you also use your desktop as I mentioned before, like I do as a dumping ground for all sorts of files, well how about setting up a rule to keep an eye on your desktop to move certain types of files into specific folders, so my example would be I have a folder where I dump all sorts of different files related to my Rugby refereeing and they can be PDF’s, videos’, word or pages documents web pages etc etc, so I have a set of rules to sub divide those files into the various categories of file types, and even within those folders I could use the date functionality to sub divide again into type by date if required.

Now HAZEL continually monitors these folders so the files will be moved or changed as soon as they are placed into the folder you have a rule against.

You may think that you would love to install Hazel, but trying to create those rules is a real pain, well the App comes with some Rules that you could take a look at and see how the process works, or you can also download and import Rules that other people have setup and use or adapt those rules to your own requirements.

You can also set Hazel to run Automator or Applescripts and with the options within the rules make this quite Application powerful. As you can guess I’m not really doing this application the justice it deserves with the time I have available in this review. But the developer has a great website and he has several Don McAllister screencasts to get you under way. Hazel and can be found over at noodlesoft.com and at the moment the application costs $21.95 single or $39.95 family pack US DOLLARS or if your still not sure so why not try the 14 day trial.

If you want to hear more of my ramblings take a peak over at the FORMACEYESONLY podcast or follow me on twitter, you’ll find me as gazmaz. Or email me at gazmaz@formaceyesonly.com

Tags: Apple, automation, Hazel, Mac, noodlesoft, shareware, Software