Automate file organization
Harness the power of Hazel to monitor folders and arrange your files
REQUIRES
Hazel 4
YOU WILL LEARN
How to build rules in Hazel, in order to automate tidying up your Mac’s files
IT WILL TAK E
30 minutes
Apple’s trying quite hard to nudge everyone towards storing their data on iCloud Drive. The problem is that you only get 5GB of iCloud storage for free, which is shared among many of its services, not just iCloud Drive. So managing the files you keep on your Mac – and in cloud storage services generally – is definitely a smart idea.
There are, of course, pieces of software that will check through your Mac’s drive and show you some kind of graph to help you locate and delete huge files (GrandPerspective being a free example from grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net). However, Hazel deals with bloating in a different way. Recognizing that a lot of clutter is down to poor organization, it offers a rules-based system for automating your Mac’s file housekeeping.
It works by silently monitoring specific folders and running “rules” on them when relevant files are discovered. These rules can be extremely simple – moving documents to their most suitable destination if you’ve just dumped them on the desktop – or you can delve deeper into complex rule sets, nesting conditions, adding tags and labels, creating archives, uploading content to servers, and even running scripts.
In the walkthrough, we’ll start you off with some straightforward rules, so you can get to grips with Hazel. If you’re a little concerned about Hazel wreaking havoc with more complex rules, try them on test folders. Create a Hazel folder somewhere in your user folder, add copies (not originals) of documents to it, and then run your rules to see what happens. (Also, back up. Always.) Hazel will cost you $32 from
noodlesoft.com. A fully functional trial version is available for download, which you can use for this tutorial. As far as we’re concerned, the app’s well worth the outlay and effort, for the time – and potentially even money – it’ll save you in the long run.