Keeping your Mac looking sleek 

And maybe increasing productivity in the process.

I like a tidy computer. An extremely tidy computer. The desktop should be completely free of icons. Everything should back up without my involvement. Every useful file on the laptop should be available on my phone and tablet. The trash should empty itself.

Sounds like witchcraft—or at least extreme nerdcraft—right? One could resort to the black/nerd arts, but this is simple stuff if you’re a mac user with a half-hour, a dropbox account and $25. If you’re saying I can do all of that in the terminal, this article isn’t for you.

The Desktop

I think most computer users go through a phase where they save everything to the Desktop. In my case, I think that phase lasted years. It’s an easy habit to develop. Mac OS X added the ability to keep your desktop organized by kind, which is certainly helpful for keeping drives and like files together, but it doesn’t do much to help you stay organized. And if you’re saving everything to the desktop, you could benefit from some organization—don’t take it personally. There’s another great reason for removing everything from the desktop. You can better enjoy your fancy wallpaper! Let me show you how it’s done.

Dropbox

First, get a dropbox account. Yes, the first 2gb are free, but you will use much more than that. It’s up to you how much to buy and use, but I humbly suggest that the Dropbox Pro plan is the way to go. And hey, if you use this link we’ll both get some bonus space! (You should do that.)

Once dropbox is installed, I recommend having a plan for keeping dropbox organized. It has some default folders after installation, and those can be kept for now. You should also be aware that if you use dropbox with iOS apps, many apps store their documents in Dropbox/Apps/$appname. (So don’t create an Apps directory, at least not at the root of the Dropbox directory). Here are my suggestions for Directories to use in /Dropbox:

• Applications
• Audio
• In-Box
• Personal (Installed by Dropbox)
• Shared
• Photos (Installed by Dropbox)
• Text
• Work

Hazel

Next, buy Hazel for $25. It used to be cheaper, but you probably didn’t know about it back then. Hazel is a background app that acts on files and folders based on your preferences. It runs silent and deep. For example, you can tell Hazel to watch the trash and throw away anything that’s over a week old. Or to keep the trash at less than 2gb. Or, when you trash applications, to also trash all the accompanying support files. (You may not always want that happening, but most of the time it wouldn’t hurt.)

Enter In-Box and Temp.

In-Box and Temp will become your new best folder buddies. If you didn’t create In-Box when I mentioned it above, do it now. As for Temp, you’ll want to put that in your Home directory (you should also add Temp and In-Box to the Finder favorites list—it will help remind you to save things there, and give you one-click access.

Here’s the idea behind In-Box and Temp.

In-Box will become your new go-to save-everything Desktop replacement; even if you forget and save things to the Desktop! The reasons should be familiar for anyone who’s studied GTD. The basic idea is that everything should go to one place at first, and then get sorted someplace relevant later. The Desktop used to be that repository, now it’s In-Box (and if you look in my apartment, you will notice that every flat surface is my in-box).

Temp is the directory for things that don’t quite belong in In-Box. These things are either: too big (in that you don’t want them hogging your bandwidth when syncing to dropbox), temporary items, or transient items. I think of temporary or transient items as things that I need to save and open once, like a pdf that must be printed, or maybe jpeg proofs I’ve exported from Photoshop and will immediately email to a client. Or maybe those email attachments from your boss that you’re always saving to the desktop only to review them once and never open them again—those are perfect for the temp directory. After all, you could always download them from your email again. Why would you need to re-download them if they were saved to Temp? Because we’ll tell Hazel to empty Temp into the Trash every Sunday.

Automation Time!

This part will take a some patience to get right. Rather than presenting step-by-step instructions, I will just cover the various kinds of rules you should create in the Hazel System Preference Pane. Be patient, because one these rules are working, they are kinda’ like magic. Ok, I’ll take it easy on you give step by step instructions for the first rule.

Hazel Rule 1: Desktop to In-Box

1. In the Hazel Preference Pane, under the Folders Tab, click the + in the left Folders column.
2. Add the Desktop folder from your Home directory.
3. Select that Desktop folder in your list, and in the right Rules column, click the + to add a rule. A new pane will slide in from the top of the window.
4. Give the Rule a Name like Desktop to In-Box.
5. In the drop-down menu that has Name currently selected, change Name to Any File.
6. In the part that says Move to folder: (No folder selected), change (No folder selected) to In-Box.
7. In the Options, ensure that “If file exists:” rename is selected. The rule should look like this if you did everything right:

Click OK.

You’ve just saved your first rule! Check the Info tab to ensure Hazel is running.

Now anything saved to the Desktop will be moved into your In-Box by Hazel. Since In-Box is in your Dropbox, this also means you can access anything in your In-Box from the Dropbox.app on your iOS device. But that’s just scratching the surface. Here’s a list of Hazel settings and Rules I’ve created to make life easier.

• In the Trash tab, I have it set to Delete files sitting in the Trash for more than 1 Week. I also enable App Sweep; when you move an App to the trash, Hazel will ask if you want all the system preference files moved too. Often, the answer is yes.
• I have everything in the Temp folder Moved to Trash on Sundays with a rule that matches on Date Added is before This Week. The nice thing about this is that the files are only moved to the Trash. You can still have one more week before they’re permanently deleted.
• I have 4 Downloads folder rules:
• 1. Move Apps to the Dropbox/Applications folder. Because any applications you download didn’t come from the Apple App Store, and it’s easier to install them on a new computer if they’re already in Dropbox, right?
• 2. Move Kind is Music to Dropbox/Audio. Helpful for listening to things on your iOS device without relying on iTunes syncing.
• 3. Move Kind is PDF to In-Box. This moves any downloaded pdfs to your In-Box. If you want to really be a perfectionist, in the “If ALL of the following conditions are met for the file or folder being matched” change ALL to ANY. Then add a second condition which Extension is .pdf
• For the OmniFocus backups folder, I have a rule that moves old backups to the trash if Date Added is not in the last 30 days.
• For the In-Box itself, I have a rule that if Kind is Image, the file is Rename with pattern (current date) and then Moved to folder “images”. Great for all those random images you find on the internet. I drag it to the Desktop, and then with the above rules, it’s Automatically moved to In-Box, and because it’s an image, it’s renamed and moved to an images folder where they are sorted by name (and date, conveniently).
• My Images folder has a few cool rules too. One rule says that if the file Name contains Screen Shot, it gets moved to a special Screen Shots folder. Another rule says that if Date Added is Today, Set color label to red. So I can see them quickly. A final rule reverses that when Date Added is not Today.

Conclusion

That’s probably way more than you need to get started with Hazel and Dropbox, In-Box and Temp. I also have a sinking feeling that I’ll remember something important after I publish this. Please direct your questions to me on twitter @chrisash and I’ll do my best to help. (But I’m certainly not a Hazel witch doctor. Wait, is that ping-pong?)