# Hazel alternatives for Mac, free and paid

Hazel is the most capable file automation app on the Mac, and most people looking for an alternative do not want less capability - they want a rule they can still read in six months, and a preview before anything moves.

- URL: https://swiftfox.studio/blog/hazel-alternatives-for-mac
- Covers: https://swiftfox.studio/apps/sweep, https://swiftfox.studio/apps/retrace, https://swiftfox.studio/apps/unroot
- Published: 2026-08-23
- Updated: 2026-08-27
- Publisher: Swiftfox Studio (https://swiftfox.studio)

## In short

- Hazel is $42 for one Mac, $65 for a family pack of five and $20 to upgrade, and it earns that on breadth: a rule can end in AppleScript, JavaScript or a shell script.
- macOS already ships three free routes to the same job - Folder Actions, Automator and Shortcuts - and a Downloads folder that only needs sorting by kind and age does not need more than one of them.
- The usual reason people leave Hazel is not the price. It is the rule they wrote in March and cannot read in September.
- Whatever you install, check two things first: does it show you the moves before it makes them, and can you put a batch back in one click. A file automation mistake is otherwise found by accident.

## What Hazel is actually good at

Hazel watches folders and acts on what lands in them. You build a rule out of
conditions - name, kind, date added, the site a file came from, tags - and give
it actions: move, rename, sort into subfolders, tag, archive, upload, throw
away. Then it runs quietly, whether or not you are looking.

Two things have kept it at the top of this category for fifteen years. The first
is reach: a rule can end in AppleScript, JavaScript or a shell script, so
anything you can express in code is one condition away from being automatic. The
second is the matching engine, which handles dates, custom text patterns and
nested conditions properly rather than approximately. It also carries App Sweep,
which offers to clear out an application's leftover support files when you drag
it to the Trash.

Hazel is $42 for one Mac, $65 for a family pack covering five, and $20 to
upgrade from an older version. There is a free trial before you decide.

If that description is what you want, buy Hazel. Nothing further down this page
beats it on capability, and this is not a post arguing otherwise.

## Why people go looking anyway

Three reasons come up, and only one of them is the price.

**The rule you wrote in March.** Capability arrives as a growing pile of
conditions. A rule that sorts invoices ends up matching a date pattern, a
partial filename and a tag, with an exception for one client, and six months
later you have to reconstruct your own thinking before you dare change it.
People do not leave because they need less power. They leave because they want a
rule they can still read.

**It runs before you have agreed to anything.** A rule fires when the file
lands. If the conditions were slightly wrong, the first sign is a file that is
not where you left it, and finding out where it went is a trip through the log.

**The job was smaller than the tool.** A very common brief is: put downloads into
folders by type, and stop the folder from becoming a landfill. That does not
need a scripting engine.

## What macOS already does for free

Try these first. They cost nothing and they are already installed.

**Folder Actions** attach an AppleScript to a folder and run it when something
arrives. Right-click a folder, Services, Folder Actions Setup. The scripts
Apple ships will sort images or open new items; anything else is yours to write.

**Automator** and **Shortcuts** both build the same kind of thing with a visual
editor, and Shortcuts can be triggered from the menu bar, a keyboard shortcut or
another app. For "rename these 200 files and file them by year", a Shortcut you
run by hand once a month is a perfectly good answer.

**Smart Folders** in Finder do not move anything, and that is sometimes the
point: a saved search for "PDFs added in the last week" gives you the view
without touching the files.

Where all three stop is the same place. They have no preview, no history and no
undo, so the way you learn a rule was wrong is by finding the damage. Writing
one is a project rather than a setting, and a script that silently stops running
after a macOS update gives you no notification at all.

## The simpler paid route

![Sweep's menu bar popover listing rules such as Move screenshots and Sort Downloads by type, each showing its conditions, watched folders and an enable toggle](https://swiftfox.studio/sweep/listing/shot-1.jpg "A rule is conditions and a destination, in a sentence you can read at a glance.")

**[Sweep](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/sweep)** takes the opposite bet from Hazel: fewer concepts, no
rule language, and nothing that happens without a preview first. A rule is built
from plain conditions - kind, name contains, size, age - and there is no regular
expression syntax to learn anywhere in the app. It watches the folders you name
and files what arrives the moment it lands.

The part that matters more than the matching is what happens next.

![Sweep's dry-run preview reading Preview - 8 moves, 1 skipped, listing each file with its source and destination and an overwrite warning on one row](https://swiftfox.studio/sweep/listing/shot-2.jpg "Every planned move before it happens, with a warning on the one row that would replace an existing file.")

Every rule can be run as a dry run: the full list of moves, the files it skipped
and why, and a warning on any row that would overwrite something. Once a batch
has run, one click puts it back, and the activity log survives a relaunch, so
"where did that file go" is a question the app answers rather than one you
investigate. Nothing is ever deleted - removals go to the Trash.

A separate Cleanup pass looks at what has accumulated rather than what just
arrived: byte-identical duplicates, archives already unpacked into a folder
beside them, installers nobody has touched in months.

![Sweep's Cleanup window grouping duplicate files, already-unpacked archives and old installers, each row explaining why it matched, with a Move to Trash button](https://swiftfox.studio/sweep/listing/shot-4.jpg "Nothing arrives ticked, and every row says why it is on the list.")

Two limits worth knowing before you download it. Sweep matches on filesystem
metadata and never reads file contents, which is why a rule runs instantly on a
4 GB video and also why it cannot file something by what is written inside it.
And it has no scheduler: rules fire when a file arrives or when you press Run.
It is $9.99 once, with a 30-day trial that needs no card and no email, and the
mechanism is covered feature by feature in
[sorting files automatically on a Mac](https://swiftfox.studio/handbook/auto-sort-files-on-mac).

## Where the alternatives win

**Hazel** wins on everything that ends in a script. Renaming from the contents
of a PDF, uploading to a server, sorting by a pattern you invented, chaining a
rule into a shell command: all of that is Hazel and none of it is Sweep. It also
matches on tags and on the source URL of a download, and App Sweep is a genuinely
useful thing to have running for free alongside its main job.

**Keyboard Maestro**, around $36, is a general macro engine that happens to
support folder triggers. If you already own it for text expansion and window
management, adding a file rule costs nothing extra, and it can drive other
applications in ways no file organizer will.

**Folder Actions and Shortcuts** win on price and on the fact that they cannot be
uninstalled by accident. For a single job you do rarely, a Shortcut is the right
size of solution.

**DropZone** solves an adjacent problem well: a grid you drag files onto to send
them somewhere. It is manual by design, which some people want after being
surprised by an automatic rule once.

## Side by side

| Tool | How a rule is written | Preview before it runs | Undo | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hazel | Conditions, patterns, optional script | No | Per action, from the log | $42 once |
| Keyboard Maestro | Macro actions | No | Depends on the action | ~$36 once |
| Folder Actions | AppleScript | No | No | Free |
| Shortcuts | Visual actions, run by hand | No | No | Free |
| Sweep | Plain conditions, no syntax | Yes, every rule | One click per batch | $9.99 once |

The right question is not which app is more powerful. It is whether the rule you
are about to write is one you will still understand in six months, and whether
the app will show you what it is about to do. If the answer to both is yes, the
cheaper tool is the better tool.

If the folder you are automating is one where mistakes actually hurt, keep a
history under it as well: [Retrace](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/retrace) records a folder's earlier
states so a bad rule is an undo rather than an afternoon, and
[Time Machine alternatives for Mac](https://swiftfox.studio/blog/time-machine-alternatives-for-mac)
covers where that fits next to a real backup. For leftovers of apps you removed
long ago, [Unroot](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/unroot) does the job App Sweep does, after the fact.

_Prices and features checked on 27 August 2026._

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Hazel still worth $42?

If any of your rules needs to end in a script, yes, and nothing else on this page is close. Hazel matches on tags, on custom patterns and on the site a download came from, then hands off to AppleScript, JavaScript or a shell command. If your rules are all some form of "put this kind of file in that folder", you are paying for an engine you will not start.

### Is there a free Hazel alternative?

Three, and they are already on your Mac. Folder Actions run an AppleScript when something lands in a folder. Automator and Shortcuts build the same kind of workflow in a visual editor, and a Shortcut can be run by hand from the menu bar or a keyboard shortcut. What none of them has is a preview, a history or an undo, so a rule that was slightly wrong is discovered by finding the damage.

### Do I have to learn pattern matching or regular expressions?

For Hazel, some of the time: its custom tokens and date patterns are the part people find hardest to come back to. Sweep has no rule language at all, only plain conditions like kind, name contains, size and age, which is a deliberate trade - it cannot express everything Hazel can, and it can be read by someone who has not opened the app in half a year.

### What happens when a rule files something wrong?

That depends entirely on the tool, and it is the thing to check before you install anything. A dry run that lists every planned move, a warning on files that would be overwritten, and a one-click undo for a whole batch turn a bad rule into a five-second correction. Without them, the recovery is manual and starts with working out where the file went.

### Can these read what is inside a file?

Hazel can, which is how it renames a PDF from an invoice number. Sweep deliberately cannot: it matches only on filesystem metadata, which is why a rule applies instantly to a 4 GB video and why online-only iCloud files are skipped rather than downloaded. If your rules depend on the contents of a document, that alone decides it for Hazel.

### What do these cost?

Folder Actions, Automator and Shortcuts are free and built in. Hazel is $42 for a single Mac, $65 for a family pack of five and $20 as an upgrade, with a free trial. Keyboard Maestro is around $36. Sweep is $9.99 one-time with a 30-day trial that needs no card and no email, and the license covers up to 3 Macs.