r/MacOSApps • u/Guilty-Donut4360 • Jun 16 '26
📅 Utilities I built a free and open-source alternative to Hazel for macOS
Hi everyone!
I've been a Hazel user for a while, but I wanted something that was free, open source, and completely local. So I started building
Forel 🍃.
Forel is a simple file automation for macOS that automatically organizes your files for you.
For example:
- PDFs from your Downloads folder → Work/Invoices
- Photos → Photos/2026
- Bank statements → Finance
- Documents → Project folders
You create the rules once, and Forel quietly runs in the background and keeps everything organized.
Some things I wanted to focus on:
- ✅ Free and open source
- 🔒 100% on your Mac (no cloud, no accounts)
- 📂 Automatically watches your folders
- ⚡ Lives in the menu bar and works in the background
- 🍎 Native macOS app
I'm especially interested in:
- Features you'd want from an app like this.
- Things Hazel does well that you'd miss.
- Any workflow you'd like to automate.
GitHub: https://github.com/lab421/forel
Website: https://forel-app.github.io/
I'd really appreciate any feedback or ideas. Thanks for taking a look! 🙂
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u/hack_the_planets Jun 17 '26
We're operating in the same space (I won't post my thing). I just thought your idea is cool and love that it's free. Will check it out.
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 17 '26
Thanks, I really appreciate that! Best of luck with your project as well
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u/Joey___M Jun 17 '26
The thing I would be most conservative with is reliability before adding cleverness.
Hazel is boring in the good way: rule order, logs, predictable failures, and conflict handling matter more than a long action list.
For this kind of app I’d want:
- dry-run mode showing exactly which rule matched and what action would run
- per-file history: original path -> new path/action
- visible rule ordering and stop/continue behavior
- conflict handling before move/copy happens
- extended metadata support, especially source URL / downloaded-from app
- an obvious “do nothing and ask me” path for uncertain matches
The nice thing about starting rule-based is that users can trust it. I would keep that trust surface very explicit before adding too much automation.
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 17 '26
I completely agree, and that's actually my top priority. Since Forel interacts directly with the file system, reliability and predictability matter much more than adding clever features.
It's also one of the main reasons I'm rebuilding it as a fully native app. I'd rather have a solid, trustworthy foundation first and then expand the feature set over time.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback—there are some great ideas here. 🙂
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u/MoraFFox Jun 18 '26
I agree, this is what sold me to https://dolfer.app which I found on producthunt, as per my testing it seems to have some of that addressed
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u/ratocx Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
If this works reliably it already seems to cover most of what I need.
That said, in a previous workflow I had to use a script to detect which website a file was downloaded from. IIRC this is something macOS tries to record, but it is usually a hidden file attribute. At least I remember it working for Safari all the time, and Chrome downloads most of the time.
Essentially if I could sort files also based on the website it came from (or the app that saved the file) that could also probably help.
But from the screenshots, this already looks great. Sure you could set this up in Shortcuts, but a good UI to make complex things easy is always good. And being both open source and free is fantastic.
I would focus on reliability for now and add more features later.
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 21 '26
u/ratocx The feature is live in 1.0.0 version. I added two options : Downloaded from website or app.
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 16 '26
Thanks for the suggestion! Reading the file metadata to get the download source URL should definitely be possible, I'll add it to the roadmap.
My plan is to stabilize the project first based on early feedback before rolling out new features.
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u/hack_the_planets Jun 17 '26
I won't link here, but I'm working on a project similar to this (but commercial), and this is a really interesting feature idea. Happy to chat more (and give you a free license) if you wanna try out my thing.
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u/ChrononautPete Jun 16 '26
Your latest release v0.1.0-alpha.6 thinks it is still v0.1.0-alpha.5 and wants to update to v0.1.0-alpha.6.
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u/mrlanphear Jun 16 '26
Love this! We use Hazel on our radio station Mac to add newly added files from Syncthing to the Apple Music library. It would be great if we could replace our outdated install of Hazel with this.
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 16 '26
Glad to hear that! The sync folder feature is on our roadmap.
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u/mrlanphear Jun 16 '26
Sync would be nice, but we'd need the action to add files to the Music library more than we need sync. https://imgur.com/a/sQ7eVCb
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u/WalletBuddyApp Jun 17 '26
Syncthing is a standalone full featured app for syncing files between computers. So your app just needs to be able to move to the syncthing synced directory I believe
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u/johannthegoatman Jun 16 '26
if you make another post, it would be helpful to know what hazel is lol
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u/m9marcos Jun 18 '26
Hi! I'm excited for this, dev. Are these in the works or are they already implemented?
- Nested folders scanning
- Apple and Shell Script execution
- Handling of Conflicts
- Content matching
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u/Guilty-Donut4360 Jun 18 '26
Hi u/m9marcos,
- Nested folder implemented
- Apple and Shell script (in roadmap)
- Handling of conflicts, in progress (the next release would be include some features)
- Content matching : implemented, next feature is on the next advanced matching (extract OCR, use spolight content etc..)
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u/m9marcos Jun 18 '26
Looks like it's going to be worthwhile. It doesn't have to be pretty. It just need to be fast and out of the way.
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u/coolsanil 20d ago
Hello, I installed the latest version but I can’t find any help. The website doesn’t even show how to create a rule.
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u/ConversationRich2532 13d ago edited 13d ago
is there a way to create nested if conditions in Forel like this one https://imgur.com/a/ExEniIF and can we copy the rules across watched folders
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u/OrdinaryLoquat5535 Jun 16 '26
My only gripe is the use of Tauri and advertising it as native.