How to Get started with Hazel

1 Take out the trash Install Hazel and then open its System Preferences pane. In the Trash tab,use the top two checkboxes to, respectively, delete files over a certain age, and to keep the Trash under a set size. The defaults are one week and 1GB.

2 Remove app cruft At the bottom of the pane, enable App Sweep. Hazel then monitors your Mac for when you uninstall apps and attempts to (optionally) get rid of support files during the process. (Few of these are weighty, but some are.)

3 Define a target folder

Our example will work with your desktop. Select the Folders tab and click + under the Folders panel. Choose Desktop and click Open. Select Desktop in the Folders panel, then click + under Rules on the right to create a new one.

4 Label old files

Name your rule, then set the If pop-up menu so that all conditions must be met. Set the condition to ‘Date Added is not in the last 1 month’. Click + to add another, and set it to ‘Date Last Opened is not in the last 1 month’.

5 Add an action

Under ‘Do the following…’, pick ‘Set color label’ and a colour. Click OK to save your rule. Now, items on your desktop that were added over a month ago and haven’t been opened within the last month will get a red label.

6 Copy and test

You can copy your rule to other folders by dragging and dropping it in Hazel’s window. Wait a few seconds and you’ll see the results. You can also open the rule, click Preview and pick a file to test it against to see its effect.

7 Move files

Select Desktop, ≈- click your rule and pick Duplicate. Rename the copy ‘Move old files’, set its action to Move, and pick Other in the folder pop-up menu. Create a ‘To sort’ folder in your Home folder, select it, click Open and then OK.

8 Manage rules

You now have two ‘competing’ rules in Desktop, so turn off the one you don’t want to use. Experiment with rules, such as to have Hazel import music files from the desktop into iTunes so they don’t use iCloud Drive space.