Switched to Apple / Mac

I hire a Housekeeper – Hazel

August 23rd, 2007

I download a lot of software and most of it never makes it to my Applications folder or stays there for a brief period of time. As one of those people who has kept a Downloads directory/folder since my DOS days, I often find it cluttered with old, unused, outdated, and duplicate items. Every so often I sit down and clean it all up. The same is true for my media files. I find videos, documents, and audio files laying all over my hard drive and usually clean them up when I am working on the downloads folder. Finally, I inevitably wind up cleaning up other stray files and place them in their originally intended cubby holes. If only I had a housekeeper to do all of this….well…housekeeping.

Welcome Hazel – My new housekeeper.

I originally found the link for Hazel on another blog and it immediately sounded like something I was interested in. With a few simple rules (included) it handles all of the problems I just spoke about. It can make sure all your movies wind up in the Movies folder. It can trash duplicate downloads. It can color code, file, clean, scrub and do a host of other other things on a daily basis so that I do not have to. Hazel runs as a preference pane and does its activity in the background. It even has Growl notifications to give me a shout out when it completes a task. Currently, I have Hazel working a “light duty” schedule and am mainly running some of the included rules. However, Hazel has the power to be worked hard for those that desire.

Another great thing that I like about Hazel is the built in “App Sweeping”. I actually own a license to App Zapper which is similar to programs like AppDelete and CleanApp. The concept is pretty simple, dragging an application to the trash can leave behind preference files and other related files that take up space on your hard drive. Most of the app zapping programs require you to load them and then drag the application onto them to delete the application and all the support files. The problem with this is that it is inconvenient so I often forget to do this. Also, I like simply dragging things to the trash. With Hazel’s App Sweeping function you can continue to drag things to the trash and it will act just like the other app zapping products and prompt you to nuke the extra files. This is much more to my liking and I do not have to worry about forgetting.

I’m a big fan of things that make it faster, easier, and convenient. One could argue that you could do all of the things that Hazel does with other programs, automator actions, and folder actions and I would not disagree. However, Hazel makes it simple and easy which is what appeals to me. Creating and maintaining a set of these types of things is time consuming and a pain which is why I did not do it already.

In my book, Hazel is winner and will be staying and working on my machine. Check it out at http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php

Entry Filed under: Macintosh