My love affair with a very special maid
Hazel is probably the greatest never-think-about-it application for the Mac I know of. She doesn’t get talked about enough, so that’s what this post is: me talking about her. . . I mean it.
It's also a selfish attempt at learning more about my favorite Mac maid… ‘cause I get the feeling I’m still not using her—it. . . it, dammit—enough. Let me know how you use Hazel in the comments.
How I use Hazel… mostly
Download folder management:
- Delete files older than one day
- Securely delete certain file types (e.g. banking QFX files after 30 minutes)
- Automatic filing of specific that I routinely download (e.g. XML blog post backups)1
- Automatically filing financial statements with a little help from TextExpander
Desktop management:
- Move screenshots with a
-pesuffix to a folder2 - Delete screenshots (i.e. files containing
screen shotin the name) that are older than one day
Random:
- Delete files in Trash older than one week
- App sweep (i.e. deleting miscellaneous system files used by applications that I delete)
- Wirelessly importing iPhone photos into iPhoto or Aperture
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If you regularly download any kind of file and manually move it to another folder, you should go buy Hazel now. I’m not joking. End that madness. ↩
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I usually put
-peon the end of screenshots that I use in posts here. I like working off of my Desktop when I’m cropping and annotating screenshots. If a-pescreenshot sits on my Desktop more than 30 minutes, Hazel puts it in a folder for me so I can use it later. ↩