Thankfully, Hazel is becoming my electronic assistant that just takes care of these tasks for me. Simply put, Hazel takes the idea of mail rules and applies them to the entire system. At its core, Hazel is a watchdog. You tell it to keep an eye on a folder, and if certain criteria are met, perform an action. We’ve covered Hazel before, but I wanted to focus specifically on combining it with Dropbox.

I have a rule set up to watch an e-books folder in my Dropbox folder and import those otherwise-forgotten files into iTunes. Since I leave my MacBook on a lot, when I get home the files are already imported. Even when I’m on my MacBook this is handy. I just throw the e-book into this folder and it’s a fire-and-forget solution.

Evernote is a central tool to my workflow. Research materials, presentation images, class notes and materials all go into Evernote. However, because of Keynote’s integration with iPhoto, it’s also beneficial to have images in both places. I’m always keeping my eye out for images I can use in presentations. One nice feature about Hazel is you can have it execute Automator workflows when a certain condition is met. So, if I throw an image into my Dropbox Photos folder, I can tell it to automatically add the image to both my Evernote and iPhoto libraries. This is very handy when combined with the iOS app. If I’m researching a story and take some snaps with my iPhone, I can use the Dropbox app to upload the photo, and Hazel will do the rest.

I also have  a Dropbox “landing folder” for documents I want to add to Evernote. Goodreader on iOS can write to Dropbox. Using the “open with” feature I can easily get most files into Goodreader, which can then write them to the landing folder. Hazel will take care of importing them to Evernote.

I’m also finding it handy to get files off my Boot Camp directory into the cloud. I’m not really in the mood to set up Dropbox on the Windows partition — even though Dropbox can be set up to only sync selected folders, I’d rather not have it installed. So, the directories I want to get the contents copied into the cloud, I just have Hazel set up to monitor that folder as well and copy the files to Dropbox.

Hazel has a free, 14 day trial and will set you back $21.95 when you get it. I’m finding it’s proving indispensable when I put a file on Dropbox, but want to do something with it after it’s up there.

Clean your Downloads folder

At the end of the day, my Downloads folder is always stuffed with disk images, half-completed download files, and everything in between. You can clean out any cruft easily using Hazel. Hazel even includes some example actions for your Downloads folder, like moving all photos to your Pictures folder and labeling them blue. But here we’re just going to set it to clear out old disk images.

1. Open up Hazel in System Preferences and click on your Downloads folder in the left pane (it should be there already, if not, add it with the + button).
2. Click the + button to add a new rule.
3. Give the rule a description. I just put “DMG”.
4. On the first line, set it so it reads Extension is dmg, and set the action line to Move file to folder: Trash like so:
5. What you have now will delete any disk image in your Downloads folder. That’s not what we want, so we’re going to set it so it only deletes disk images that are older than a day. Click the + to create a new condition. Set this one to Date Added is not Today, and your window should look like this:
   

Of course, you can change the date to anything you want. And you can add any file type to clear out, so if you download a lot of PDFs, just create a new condition referencing PDFs.

Zip/Unzip Folder

The usefulness of this is debatable, however the concept is still neat: just drag any file into this folder, and it’s compressed and pushed to the desktop.

1. Create a new folder called “Zip” (or whatever you want).
2. Add that folder to Hazel by clicking the + on the left side.
3. Create a new rule by clicking the + on the right side, and name it anything.
4. Set the conditions to Any File.
5. Add an action and set it to Archive file.
6. Add another action and set it to Move file to folder: Desktop. Your window should look like this when you’re done:
   

You can also make another folder that unzips anything dropped into it. Just change Archive file to Unarchive file.

Torrent Folder

This one’s a lot more useful: A folder that automatically opens any torrent files dropped into it.

1. Create a new folder and call it “Torrents” (or whatever you want).
2. Add that folder to Hazel.
3. Create a new rule and name it anything.
4. Set the conditions to Extension is torrent.
5. Set the action to Open file with application: Default Application. Your window will look like this when you’re done:
   

If you have another Mac with Dropbox and Hazel, you can set this so that you can put a torrent file into a folder on your Dropbox and have it sync over to your other Mac, which will then download that torrent. This is also useful if you have ted, which downloads torrents of all your favorite TV shows. Simply reference ted’s folder, which should be in your Home directory.

Conclusion

My ideas can only go so far. The real potential in Hazel lies in adapting it to your own workflow. Play around with it, see what you can do, and then let us know in the comments what you came up with.

Many readers are likely familiar with the Getting Things Done craze of the past few years. This task oriented methodology has spawned a system for managing the chore that is email, with battle-cries of “Inbox Zero!” resounding around the Internet.

While I’m not exactly an “inbox zero” kind of guy (close enough I suppose), I have found that the concept of “desktop zero” rings quite true with me. If you’ve ever seen a computer desktop covered in icons, we’re talking about the antithesis here. Read on to find out some compelling reasons to strive for desktop zero, and some tool tips on how you can easily achieve desktop zen.

When I was young I bought a coin dish from a garage sale that read, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.” (I added it to my already over-cluttered desktop in my room.) While I still find humor in that memory, the computer nerd in me is pretty particular about my digital workspace being neat and tidy. Just as inbox zero brings clarity, closure, and a sense of accomplishment to each day, so can keeping your computer’s desktop free of clutter and unnecessary files or folders.

A Clean Starting Place

I find it quite satisfying to boot up my machine, and have nothing but a hard drive “cluttering” my desktop. It feels like turning to a clean page in a Moleskin, or using a full-screen text application — there are just no (or very few) distractions to getting started with your work. Not to mention that if you need to drop a file there temporarily for quick use before deleting, it will be easy to find when not amongst dozens of other items.

A Sense of Organization

I’m quite particular about a sound data hierarchy to file things under, yet another place where my physical and digital lives are at odds with one another. If my desktop is littered with random files (email attachments, web downloads, the latest file lazily saved to the desktop to file later) and folders, it just means they aren’t in the place that I should be looking for them in the long term. Though on occasion I’ll relent and (temporarily) drop an alias (‘shortcut’ for those of you new to Mac) of a folder on the desktop if it’s for a project I’m working in the majority of the time. At least that way, stuff it still in its proper place when I’m through.

Revel in Your Wallpaper

Here, we move from the arguably practical reasons to the more fun, and subjective. I love a great wallpaper image on my desktop. Sometimes it’s a great repeating vintage wallpaper pattern, or a too-cute-for-words picture of my kids, or a photo that I took and really liked. Every now and then it’ll do wonders to just zone out for a few while looking at a great image on a clean desktop.

HUD Style Interfaces via Geektool

If you’ve tooled around Flickr (with Mac on your mind) or followed the Featured Desktops on Lifehacker, you’ve seen them. A killer mash-up of geek chic, stunning design, and useful information result in some of the coolest desktop Head’s Up Displays you’ve seen. Some are as simple as using Geektool to push logs to the desktop, while others style the fonts, work along with the wallpaper, and sometimes even a custom theme to all of OS X. The results are generally nothing short of spectacular — and you’re not going to get there with a multitude of files strewn about.

Sound interesting? Well it’s not hard to do. More than anything it’s a mindset. But having a process — and better yet, good tools — will help you clear that desktop in no time at all. Luckily there are many utilities and applications available to drill directly down to just what you want, wherever it may reside on your hard drive. But we’ll start simply first.

A Temp Folder

The things that tend to trip me up most, are those temporary files that I need for a short period of time and then forget about. If I’m just emailing a file or printing something, I drop it on my desktop, perform whatever action I need, and then usually delete it. However, sometimes it’s a bit of information that you may need for more than just a few days. At this point I’ll drop it into a folder named ‘tmp’ which resides in the root of my Home Folder. (example: ~/Nick/tmp) It’s as easy as that. Oh, and as an extra tip, add that tmp folder to your Dock as a Stack view for quick access!

Fresh and Hazel

If you don’t mind spending a few dollars, there are a couple of applications/utilities that I swear by for this kind of organization. (It’s worth mentioning that there are many applications that can fulfill these actions, but these are ones that have proven themselves to me.) Fresh ($9) hangs just off-screen as a transparent tab, where it gives quick access to recent files, as well as a ‘Cooler’, which functions very similar to my tmp folder idea above. Hazel ($21.95) can monitor files and folders and perform actions on them based on user defined rules. So perhaps you’ve got a temporary file on your desktop for 3 days, Hazel will see it’s been 3 days (based on a rule) and move it to your tmp folder where you can access it later on. Hazel’s terrifically powerful, and we’ve written about it before if you want to learn more.

We all approach our workspaces differently, and get different uses out of different methodologies. It’s entirely possible that Desktop Zero is not for everyone. For me, it was an easy and rewarding change to make, but as with all things, your mileage may vary. If you’ve got an alternative method for keeping your desktop (or any portion of your computer) clean and tidy, we’d love to hear your secrets too.

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The lovely and talented Hazel received an update (to version 2.3) yesterday. Paul Kim of Noodlesoft announced the update on his developer blog, and highlights an update to the already useful App Sweep feature and the built-in script editor, among other improvements. This upgrade, as well as one more prior to the fall release of Snow Leopard (OS 10.6), are free with an existing license.

If you’re not hip to this versatile file management work flow application, you should really give it a whirl using the 14-day free trial. (It’s $21.95 if you decide to keep using it and buy a license.) Just like the fictitious maid that Hazel is surely named after, this application can be configured to tidy up all of your files and folders automatically, leaving you a neat and organized file system to work in. The utility is sort of a cross between Folder Actions and Automator workflows — but built in a way that allows even a novice to achieve powerful results.

To put Hazel to work, just select a folder, and create whatever rules you want. For example, I’ve selected my Desktop folder, and created a rule that moves any application (with extension .app) to the Applications folder. That way as I download something to test, it’s automatically put in its place. I can even add a step to the rule to apply a label color to the application, so I can easily identify it while perusing the Applications directory. Then, a Hazel rule applied to the Applications directory can remove the label after two weeks, assuming I like the app and plan to keep it installed. This is pretty lightweight fare for Hazel, but you get the idea.

As mentioned above, this 2.3 update adds to the App Sweep feature, which ensures that all of an application’s files are removed from your system if you decide to trash an app. The new feature supports multiple user accounts on a computer, which will prompt the other users to allow Hazel to delete their user files for an application that’s been deleted by a different user. In our home, we each have our own Macs, but I could see where this would come in handy for shared computing environments.

I consider Hazel one of those must-have utilities for my Mac — and it works so well, I usually forget she’s even there at all! (If there’s a better mark of a great application, I don’t know what it is.) If you’re not letting Hazel clean up after you already, give her a try for yourself.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks