Now you may be saying "but David, uninstalling an app on the Mac is as easy as dragging it to the Trash, right?" Well, you're roughly half right - when you get rid of an application that way, it still leaves behind preference files, Application Support files and possibly other stuff that winds up sitting around on your Mac. Now these files are typically harmless, but after a while they can really start to eat up space. My support folder for NetNewsWire - an app that primarily downloads text and headlines, mind you - is over 200 MB alone.

Enter Hazel's new App Sweep feature, which watches any applications that are dragged to the Trash. When it notices one, it will present the dialog you see above with preference files, application support folders and other stuff Hazel found related to the app you're deleting. This awesome new feature allows you to trash all this extra stuff right with the app, taking the manual labor out of keeping your drive clean of derelict supporting files.


My other favorite new feature is the ability to preview rule matches before setting them in motion. This helps avoid any unfortunate mishaps due to a rule that wasn't built quite right, and it gives you a nice birds-eye view of what will happen once you give the green light.

There's plenty more good stuff in this new version of Hazel though, so here's a quick rundown of all the other new ways you can start managing your files:

• Menubar icon for quick access to Hazel's functions including the ability to start and stop Hazel's operation.
  
• Can now write rules to match against any Spotlight metadata.
• New rename action to rename files and folders.
• New sorting action that can sort your files into a set of subfolders.
• Unarchive action to unpack archives.
• Growl support including a Growl action where you can have Hazel send custom Growl messages.
• Rewritten to use internal task scheduler instead of launchd.
• Much better detection of files that are busy meaning that Hazel should work better with downloading apps and browsers even if it doesn't have specific support for it.

To help get you started, a set of example rules is even included with the Hazel download which offers a glimpse into just how powerful this tool can get, without you having to do any of the legwork right off the bat. Of course a demo of the beta is available, but if Hazel helps you get stuff done faster, you might want to buy soon: now that Hazel is in a feature-complete beta phase, Kim has announced that will increase v2.0's price from its present $16. Since Hazel 2.0 will be a free update for 1.0 users, however, you can buy now, save money and still get the free upgrade once 2.0 goes gold. Is that a good deal for the ability to make your Mac do half your work for you, or what?

As I've said numerous times in this post and before, I honestly believe Hazel is a killer - nay: essential - app for everyone who has more than one or two files to manage on their Mac. I've been using it since v1.0 and can't even begin to guess at how much time it's saved me. I hope it can do the same for you.