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title: "The Best Hazel Alternative for macOS: Why Power Users Are Switching to VaultSort" date: "2026-02-14" excerpt: "Hazel has been the default Mac file automation tool for years — but its aging architecture is showing cracks. Discover how VaultSort's Advanced Organization engine delivers faster, safer, and more expressive file automation for macOS." coverImage: "/images/blog/hazel-alternative.png" categories: ["Organization", "Productivity", "macOS", "Automation", "Comparison"]

The Best Hazel Alternative for macOS: Why Power Users Are Switching to VaultSort

If you've spent any time automating file management on a Mac, you've probably used — or at least evaluated — Hazel. For years it was the only serious option. You set up rules, pointed them at a folder, and Hazel moved your files around in the background.

It worked. Until it didn't.

Maybe you noticed rules silently breaking after a macOS update. Maybe you stared at a text log trying to figure out why a critical file ended up in the wrong folder. Maybe you tried to build a rule with nested conditions — something as simple as "move PDFs that are older than 30 days unless they contain the word 'invoice'" — and hit a wall of clunky UI workarounds.

You're not alone. A growing number of Mac power users, developers, and IT professionals are hitting the same ceiling. And they're looking for something better.

This post breaks down exactly how VaultSort compares to Hazel, why its new Advanced Organization engine is a generational leap forward, and whether it's the right switch for your workflow.

Why Users Are Searching for a Hazel Alternative

Hazel deserves credit for pioneering rule-based file automation on macOS. But the app was designed in a different era, and several architectural decisions have aged poorly:

• Sequential rule execution. Hazel evaluates rules one at a time in a single thread. When you have hundreds of rules or directories with thousands of files, performance degrades noticeably. Users on forums regularly report multi-second delays before rules trigger on large directories.

• Linear, inflexible rule builder. Hazel uses flat "All / Any" condition lists. Expressing nested boolean logic — like (A AND B) OR (C AND NOT D) — requires awkward workarounds with sub-rules and duplicated conditions. The more complex your automation, the harder rules become to read and maintain.

• Opaque debugging. When a file ends up somewhere unexpected, Hazel offers limited visibility into which rule acted on it and why. Debugging often means sifting through text logs line by line, trying to reconstruct what happened. There's no visual trace, no dry-run preview, and no way to answer the question "what would happen if I ran this rule right now?"

• Limited undo. If a rule moves or renames a file incorrectly, reversing it is a manual process. There's no built-in transaction log or one-click rollback.

• Aging macOS integration. While Hazel still uses AppleEvents and AppleScript, modern macOS has moved toward stricter sandboxing and new filesystem APIs. Users frequently encounter permission dialogs and unexpected failures after OS updates.

None of this makes Hazel a bad product. It's still functional for simple, single-folder automations. But if you need speed at scale, complex rule logic, safe execution with full undo, or modern macOS compatibility — it's time to look elsewhere.

Introducing VaultSort: Modern Mac File Automation, Built in Rust

VaultSort is a comprehensive macOS file management and security application built from the ground up with a native Rust engine. It isn't a Hazel clone with a fresh coat of paint — it's a fundamentally different architecture designed for how people actually use their Macs today.

VaultSort already includes a full suite of file management tools:

• Auto-Organize — one-click intelligent file sorting into logical folder structures
• Undo-Organize — complete reversal of any organization operation, restoring every file to its original location
• Deduplicate — content-based duplicate detection and removal
• Secure Delete & Disk Shredding — DoD-standard data destruction with SSD-aware algorithms
• AES-256 Encryption with optional YubiKey hardware key integration
• Large File Finder, Storage Breakdown, Batch Jobs, and more

But the feature that positions VaultSort as a true Hazel killer is Advanced Organization — a rule engine that's faster, more expressive, more transparent, and fundamentally safer.

How VaultSort's Advanced Organization Works

Advanced Organization is an optional mode that sits alongside VaultSort's existing Auto-Organize feature. Think of Auto-Organize as the "just fix it" button — it categorizes files intelligently with zero configuration. Advanced Organization is for users who want precise, custom control over where every file goes and why.

NOT Logic: Granular Exclusions in the Rule Graph

Most file automation disasters follow the same pattern: a rule that was meant to clean up downloads accidentally grabs a project directory, a build artifact, or a dotfile that should never move. The user discovers the damage hours or days later.

VaultSort prevents this with NOT predicates — a first-class exclusion mechanism built directly into the rule engine.

Because VaultSort's AST supports full boolean logic, you can build rules like "organize everything in Downloads AND NOT files in a subfolder named _active" — as a single, readable expression. NOT nodes sit right in the rule graph alongside AND and OR nodes, so exclusions are always visible, explicit, and structurally enforced. No sub-rules. No fragile priority ordering.

With Hazel, there's no first-class exclusion concept. You have to write negative rules that compete with your organization rules, and if you get the priority wrong, important files can get relocated.

Combined with dry-run previews that show exactly which files will move before anything executes, and a full transaction log with one-click undo, NOT predicates let you confidently automate organization across broad directories without worrying about destructive side effects.

Real-world use cases:

• Excluding .git, node_modules, and venv directories with NOT predicates in your rule graph
• Skipping active project folders while organizing everything else on your Desktop
• Filtering out hidden files and temp files (.DS_Store, *.tmp, *.crdownload) with NOT conditions
• Safeguarding application caches and support files during system-wide cleanup

Advanced Organization jobs are built as named, reusable configurations that specify:

• One or more input folders to scan
• A rule graph with full AND/OR/NOT logic (the logic that decides what happens to each file)
• One or more output destinations per rule branch

Jobs are stored as portable JSON, so they can be versioned, shared, and backed up.

The Rule Engine: AST-Based Logic vs. Hazel's Linear Lists

This is where VaultSort's technical advantage becomes decisive.

Hazel builds rules as flat condition lists with "All" (AND) or "Any" (OR) grouping. If you need nested logic — and real-world file management almost always does — you're forced to create multiple sub-rules and carefully manage execution order.

VaultSort models rules as an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) — the same data structure used by compilers and query engines. Each rule is a tree of nodes:

• Logical nodes: AND, OR, NOT — with arbitrary nesting depth
• Predicate nodes: file extension, filename pattern, metadata (size, date, type), content search, or prebuilt categories (Images, Videos, Documents)
• Action nodes: Move, Copy, or Rename — attached to specific branches

This means you can express conditions like:

"Move files that are (PDFs AND older than 30 days) OR (images AND larger than 10MB AND NOT in a folder named 'Portfolio') to an Archive folder"

...as a single, readable rule graph. No sub-rules. No duplicated conditions. No guessing about execution order.

Visual Rule Builder

VaultSort doesn't just model rules as trees internally — it visualizes them as decision graphs in the UI. Instead of Hazel's static checkbox lists, you get:

• A node-based canvas with zoom and pan
• Drag-and-drop predicates into logic nodes
• Explicit branching for OR conditions (no hidden nesting)
• An inspector panel for editing node properties
• Live match counts on each node showing how many files would be affected

The visual rule builder enforces structural correctness at the UI layer — you literally cannot build an invalid rule. Predicates only connect to logic nodes. Action nodes only attach to terminal branches. NOT nodes accept exactly one child. Invalid connections are rejected visually before you can save them.

Performance: Parallel Rust Engine vs. Sequential Evaluation

Hazel processes rules sequentially in a single thread. For a folder with 50 files and 5 rules, this is fine. For a folder with 10,000 files and complex nested rules, it's a bottleneck.

VaultSort's organize engine is written in Rust and evaluates rules in parallel using the rayon library. File discovery uses a hybrid strategy:

1. Spotlight metadata queries for near-instant results on indexed paths
2. Parallel directory crawling (via highly optimized Rust crates) for unindexed or external drives
3. FSEvents-based real-time monitoring for new or changed files with zero-latency reaction

The result: VaultSort can process large directories orders of magnitude faster than Hazel, with no polling overhead and minimal disk I/O.

Scheduled Jobs: Set It and Forget It — Even When VaultSort Isn't Running

Hazel's always-on background daemon is one of its selling points — rules run automatically whenever files change. VaultSort matches this with FSEvents monitoring, but goes a step further with Scheduled Jobs: a launchd-based scheduling system that lets you run Advanced Organization jobs on a recurring schedule, even when the VaultSort app is closed.

Here's what makes Scheduled Jobs powerful:

• Native macOS scheduling. Jobs are registered as launchd agents — the same system macOS itself uses for scheduled tasks. They're energy-efficient, reliable, and survive reboots.
• Flexible frequency. Schedule jobs hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or on a custom calendar interval.
• Runs without the app. Because execution is handled via launchd, your organization jobs fire on schedule whether VaultSort is open or not. The app launches in headless mode, executes the job, logs the result, and exits.
• Run history and status. Every execution is logged with timestamps, file counts, success/failure status, and duration. You can review the last 10 runs for any scheduled task directly in the UI.
• "Run Now" button. Don't want to wait for the next scheduled run? Trigger any job manually with one click.
• Enable/disable toggle. Pause a schedule without deleting it. Re-enable whenever you're ready.
• Extensible by design. Scheduled Jobs currently supports Advanced Organize tasks, but the architecture is built to support future task types — deduplication sweeps, cleanup routines, backups — on the same scheduling infrastructure.

This is the feature that turns VaultSort from a tool you open when things get messy into an automated system that keeps things organized permanently. Hazel offers real-time folder monitoring, but VaultSort gives you both real-time monitoring and scheduled batch jobs — a combination no other Mac file automation tool provides.

Safety and Debugging: Why "What Happened?" Should Never Be a Mystery

One of the most common complaints about Hazel is the "ghost rule" problem — a file gets moved or renamed, and the user has no idea which rule did it or why. Debugging means combing through text logs.

VaultSort takes a fundamentally different approach to transparency:

Dry Run and Visual Diff

Before any Advanced Organization job executes, you can run a full dry-run preview that shows:

• Every file that would be affected
• The exact source → destination mapping for each file
• The specific rule path responsible for each decision

Nothing moves until you approve the plan.

File-Level Explanation Mode

Select any file and VaultSort highlights the exact path through the rule graph that determined its fate. Failed predicates are greyed out. The matching action node is emphasized. You can see at a glance: "This file matched the 'extension is .pdf' predicate AND the 'older than 30 days' predicate, so it was routed to the Archive action."

This is the single feature most Hazel users never knew they needed — until they've lost a file to an opaque automation.

Transaction Log and Full Undo

Every Advanced Organization execution is recorded in a persistent transaction log. If something goes wrong — or you simply change your mind — you can roll back any operation at the file level with one click. Every file returns to its exact original location.

Compare this to Hazel, which has no built-in undo for rule-triggered actions. Once a file moves, your only option is to manually locate and restore it.

VaultSort vs. Hazel: Feature Comparison

Capability	Hazel	VaultSort
Rule logic model	Flat "All/Any" lists	Full AST with AND/OR/NOT nesting
Rule builder UI	Linear checkboxes	Visual node-based decision graph
Boolean complexity	Limited nesting, requires sub-rules	Arbitrary depth, single rule graph
Ignore/Exclude	No first-class concept, must use competing rules	NOT predicates in the rule graph — granular, explicit exclusions
Execution speed	Sequential, single-threaded	Parallel Rust engine with rayon
File discovery	Polling / legacy scanning	Spotlight + parallel crawl + FSEvents hybrid
Dry run preview	Limited	Full visual diff with per-file explanation
Debugging	Text logs	Visual rule path highlighting per file
Undo	Manual file recovery	One-click transaction rollback
Rule portability	Hazel-specific format	Portable JSON (versionable, shareable)
Content search	Basic	Parallel Rust-powered content scanning
Scheduled automation	Real-time folder watching only	Real-time monitoring + launchd scheduled jobs (runs without app)
Additional tools	Smart Trash, App Sweep	Dedup, Secure Delete, Encryption, YubiKey, Disk Shredding, and more
Architecture	Legacy Objective-C	Modern Rust + Swift/SwiftUI
Price	$42 (one-time)	$19.99 (one-time)

Who Should Switch from Hazel to VaultSort?

VaultSort isn't trying to replace Hazel for everyone. If you have a single rule that moves screenshots to a Screenshots folder and you've never once looked at the logs, Hazel probably still works fine for you.

But you should seriously consider switching if:

• You have complex automation needs — nested conditions, multiple input folders, conditional branching
• You work with large directories — thousands of files where sequential processing is a bottleneck
• You manage developer or IT workflows — where .git folders, build artifacts, and config files must never be touched
• You need accountability — dry-run previews, file-level explanations, and full undo for every operation
• You want more than just automation — deduplication, secure deletion, encryption, and hardware key security in a single app
• You're tired of paying more for less — VaultSort is $19.99 for a full-featured suite; Hazel is $42 for file rules alone

Real-World Workflows: Advanced Organization in Action

The Developer's Downloads Folder

Problem: Your Downloads folder is a warzone of .zip archives, .dmg installers, PDF receipts, and random screenshots. But it also contains active project assets you're not ready to file yet.

VaultSort solution:

1. Organize rule: (extension is .dmg OR .pkg) AND older than 7 days AND NOT (parent folder is '_active' OR '_wip') → move to ~/Archive/Installers
2. Organize rule: (category is Images) AND (filename contains 'Screenshot') → move to ~/Pictures/Screenshots
3. Organize rule: (extension is .pdf) AND (content contains 'invoice' OR 'receipt') → move to ~/Documents/Finance

Each rule runs in parallel. A dry-run preview shows exactly what will move. And the _active folder is completely untouched — enforced by the NOT predicate directly in the rule graph.

The Photographer's External Drive

Problem: Thousands of images across nested folders on an external drive. You need to reorganize by date and file type, but you can't risk touching your Lightroom catalog folders.

VaultSort solution:

1. Organize rule: (category is Images) AND (metadata: created_before 2025-01-01) AND NOT (parent path contains '.lrcat') → move to /Volumes/Archive/Photos/{year}/{month}
2. Run a dry-run to verify no catalog folders are affected

VaultSort's parallel Rust crawler handles the external drive efficiently — no Spotlight index needed — and the NOT predicate keeps your Lightroom catalog safely excluded, visible right in the rule graph.

The IT Admin's Shared Drive Cleanup

Problem: A shared network drive has accumulated years of duplicated files, abandoned projects, and miscategorized documents. Cleanup must be non-destructive and auditable.

VaultSort solution:

1. Run Deduplicate first to identify and remove duplicate files
2. Build an Advanced Organization job with NOT predicates to exclude active project directories, plus branching logic for document types, date ranges, and department folders
3. Execute a dry-run, export the plan for review
4. Run the job and retain the full transaction log for rollback if needed

This kind of structured, auditable workflow is simply not possible with Hazel's rule model.

The "I Never Want to Think About This Again" Schedule

Problem: You've built the perfect organization rules, but you keep forgetting to run them. Your Downloads folder slowly descends back into chaos between manual cleanups.

VaultSort solution:

1. Build your Advanced Organization jobs (as in the examples above)
2. Open Scheduled Jobs from the sidebar
3. Create a scheduled task: select your job, set it to run daily at 2:00 AM
4. Enable it and close VaultSort

Every night, macOS launchd triggers VaultSort in headless mode. Your organization job runs, files get sorted, and an execution log is written — all while you sleep. Open VaultSort anytime to review run history, check file counts, or adjust the schedule.

No other Mac file automation tool offers this level of hands-off, background automation with full audit trails.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is VaultSort a direct replacement for Hazel?

VaultSort covers all of Hazel's core file automation capabilities through its Advanced Organization engine — and goes significantly further with features like visual rule graphs, dry-run previews, full undo, and parallel execution. It also includes tools Hazel doesn't offer: deduplication, secure deletion, AES-256 encryption, YubiKey integration, disk shredding, and storage analysis. For most users, VaultSort replaces Hazel entirely and eliminates the need for several other utilities.

Does VaultSort support folder monitoring like Hazel?

Yes. VaultSort uses FSEvents-based real-time file monitoring to detect new or changed files instantly — without polling. Combined with Spotlight integration and parallel directory crawling, it offers faster and more reliable monitoring than Hazel's approach.

Can I migrate my Hazel rules to VaultSort?

There is no automatic Hazel-to-VaultSort rule importer at this time. However, VaultSort's visual rule builder makes recreating rules straightforward, and the AST-based logic model means many complex Hazel setups that required multiple sub-rules can be consolidated into a single, cleaner VaultSort job.

Is VaultSort safe to use on important files?

Safety is a core design principle. NOT predicates in the rule engine let you build granular exclusions directly into any rule — visible in the rule graph and structurally enforced. Every operation supports dry-run preview before execution, so you can verify exactly which files will move. A persistent transaction log enables full rollback of any operation at any time. VaultSort also includes AES-256 encryption and YubiKey hardware key support for securing sensitive files.

How much does VaultSort cost compared to Hazel?

VaultSort is a one-time purchase of $19.99 and includes all features — organization, security, analysis, and encryption tools. Hazel costs $42 for file automation only. VaultSort delivers significantly more functionality at less than half the price.

Can VaultSort run organization jobs automatically on a schedule?

Yes. VaultSort's Scheduled Jobs feature uses native macOS launchd to run Advanced Organization jobs on any schedule — hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Jobs execute even when the app isn't open, with full logging and run history. This gives you both real-time file monitoring and scheduled batch automation in one tool.

Does VaultSort work on Apple Silicon and the latest macOS?

Yes. VaultSort is built natively for Apple Silicon and is fully compatible with the latest macOS releases. The Rust engine compiles to native ARM64 code, delivering maximum performance on M-series chips.

Ready to Upgrade Your File Automation?

If you've been looking for a Hazel alternative that's faster, safer, more powerful, and more affordable — VaultSort is it.

The Advanced Organization engine gives you everything Hazel offers and more: visual rule graphs, arbitrary boolean logic with NOT predicates for granular exclusions, parallel Rust-powered execution, dry-run previews, file-level explanations, full transaction rollback, and scheduled jobs that run automatically — even when the app is closed.

And that's on top of a complete file management suite with deduplication, secure deletion, encryption, YubiKey hardware security, and storage analysis tools — all in a single app for $19.99.

Download VaultSort today and see the difference a modern file automation engine makes.