When comparing DaisyDisk vs Hazel, the Slant community recommends DaisyDisk for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” DaisyDisk is ranked 7th while Hazel is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose DaisyDisk is:
While working on your Mac you create and download a lot of files, but rarely delete anything. As time goes by you have less and less room for your data. DaisyDisk finds those hidden unused gigabytes.
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Pros
Pro Helps find and delete files taking up HDD space
While working on your Mac you create and download a lot of files, but rarely delete anything. As time goes by you have less and less room for your data. DaisyDisk finds those hidden unused gigabytes.
Pro Awesome visualization of files on drive
DaisyDisk gives you a perfect overview of all the disks connected to your Mac, be it Macintosh HD, flash card, Thunderbolt disk or network storage. And does it in a beautiful way.
Pro Automatically cleans up and maintains folders
Hazel watches whatever folders you tell it to, automatically organizing your files according to the rules you create. Have Hazel move files around based on name, date, type, what site/email address it came from (Safari and Mail only) and much more. Automatically put your music in your Music folder, movies in Movies. Keep your downloads off the desktop and put them where they are supposed to be.
Pro Very customizable
More so than alternatives.
Pro Cleans up after uninstalling an application
When you delete an application Hazel will pop up and show you a list of attached files belonging to the deleted app to clean your uninstall more correctly.
Pro iLife Support
Hazel features new actions to import your files into iPhoto or iTunes. And with Hazel 3, you can import into Aperture projects and folders as well.
Pro Process files depending on their content
Its in-file search criteria allows it to extract dates from files (e.g., to add to the filename) and to categorize recurrent files (e.g., receipts) into subfolders (or to treat them in some specific way).
Cons
Con Calculation based on 1000 not 1024
It's nice to have a base 1000 (MB, GB, …) calculation but it should be optional. Default should be 1024 (MiB, GiB, …)
Con Expensive for how often it is used
Con Expensive
Con Doesn't work well with subfolders
The rules don't work very well with subfolders and working with archive files (zip, rar, gz, 7z, etc) is also limited.
Con Rules creation is a time consuming process
To really enjoy the power of Hazel, you will need to progressively create more and more rules to manage each specific kind of file, but this process is slow, quite annoying when you have many similar rules, and can only be learned on the way, as you find new uses for it.