Top all-time · #3024
N
Noodlings
Company blog · noodlesoft.com/blogprogrammingstartups
Noodlings is the company blog at noodlesoft.com, writing about programming and startups. Since 2007, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 34 times, most often “On Dynamism”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-04, and you can follow it by feed.
34mentions?
26HN people?
2007–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (27) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Noodlesoft as the home of Hazel, a macOS file-automation app used to archive Downloads and sort files. The linked pages are the app homepage and release notes, not essays.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 27 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-05-27
- /7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-01-06
- /hazel.php5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-08-16
- On Dynamism3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-24
- /hazel2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-04
What Hacker News says?
I use Hazel[0] to archive everything in my "downloads" folder after a month. Files get separated into "~/Archive/Images/", "~/Archive/Screenshots/" "~/Archive/Audio" ..." depending on certain criteria (mostly file type). Each sub-folder is broken down by year and month, for example "~/Archive/Images/2015/05/". I also occasionally dump stuff that doesn't belong elsewhere into the same folder system, for example Whats…
Comment linking /
on “Take more screenshots”Submitted On Dynamism as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI keep paying for Obsidian for the same reason. It's central to the way I work and has an ecosystem of stuff-that-understands-Obsidian making it useful. But, for example, I did replace IRCCloud with my own custom setup. Been daily driving it for ... three months now? Took me two to three evenings to get an MVP and 3 months of iterating while using it to get it Just The Way I Like It. I was also a paying customer of…
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on “I no longer care to work on any Ruby gems so I've archived all my repositories”Submitted On Dynamism as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI’m looking to improve, simplify, and more efficient but here is my present setup for our family (no extended family yet). We use Apple Photos as the primary, of which I export a backup once a while (at-least yearly for sure). Because Apple has’t solved what everyone ask — a way for two or more users to merge Photos, I use Dropbox[1] on the other devices (wife, daughters) to collect into “Camera Uploads”. I split th…
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on “Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?”Submitted Hazel 5 Released as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSounds like the Hazel app : https://www.noodlesoft.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How do you organise your hard drive?”Submitted NSSecureCoding as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI use beets as an importer (filename + id3 tags cleaning) and keep using iTunes for browsing/playing. I glue the two together by using importfeeds plugin + Hazel( http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel ) to trigger iTunes import. Should probably blog about my setup as it's not the simplest one but works great.
Comment linking /hazel
on “Beets – Command-line music manager and auto-tagger”Submitted On Dynamism (Swift) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor over a decade my no-brainer digital file system at both home and work is similar. Auto-file everything as a time-stack : - new files go on the desktop - if I didn't name file right rules automatically rename it per ISO 8601 to "YYYY-MM-DD - title.ext" - after the file isn't opened for >2 days, it gets auto-sorted into (more or less) "archive/yyyy-mm/yyyy-mm-dd - title.ext" - note: stick to ISO 8601 across toolin…
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on “Ask HN: How do you manage your personal documents?”Submitted Even a solo developer is on a team as a story · 1 points
HN discussionA few years ago I made a conscious effort to be as paperless as possible. I'm pretty much there now with almost everything I need accessible on my laptop. I use a Doxie [0] scanner and scan absolutely everything meaningful: documents, receipts, invoices, physical photos, note from friends, Christmas cards, credit cards etc. Having a "scan everything" attitude means I don't have to think about what I do and don't sca…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How do you manage your personal documents?”My first thought was the Mac app that's been around for about 18 years now: https://www.noodlesoft.com And it had a release today. https://www.noodlesoft.com/release_notes Seems rough to jump on a name that's been in continuous use for that long. Would it be hard to add another word to make it easier to disambiguate?
Comment linking /release_notes
on “Hazel: A live functional programming environment featuring typed holes”* Homebrew - Package manager (kinda like apt/rpm on Linux). * Secretive - Stores SSH keys in the secure enclave [ https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive ] * Alfred - Better spotlight [ https://www.alfredapp.com/ ] * Hazel - File automations [ https://www.noodlesoft.com/ ] * Arq - Excellent backup software for local and/or remote backups [ https://arqbackup.com/ ] * ChronoSync - File synchronization on steoroids [ h…
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on “Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?”I noticed your imagined workflow seemed folder-oriented, and thought of Hazel: http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php It doesn't provide the timeline you were looking for, and I don't think it can do Internet-y stuff, but it could take care of the "if something lands in _____ folder, do ____" bit if you had it run a custom script for each action. Perhaps you could hack together your own activity stream with some elbow…
Comment linking /hazel.php
on “Why We’re Building Collections”Sounds like we do similar organization, though I avoid Tags and use Keywords, which I prefer primarily because they can be embedded in many files types and can be more numerously assigned. Regardless, for much of your work assigning Tags and organizing files, have a look at Hazel for automating these tasks. And yes, it can read the contents of Pages files. https://www.noodlesoft.com
Comment linking /
on “Taking command of the Context Menu in macOS”> Alternative solution: treat your downloads folder as ephemeral and delete everything every few weeks. Hazel[0] works well for this, but automatic download folder cleanup feels a lot like it should be a stock Finder feature. [0]: https://www.noodlesoft.com
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on “Show HN: Fallinorg - Offline Mac app that organizes files by meaning”Hazel can do all of those things except add stuff to iTunes without opening the application (unless you count moving files to the Add to iTunes directory). http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php
Comment linking /hazel.php
on “Sortbox: Like e-mail filters, for your Dropbox”For easy-to-use OSX automation I'm a big fan of Hazel: http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php I bet you could set up something similar in it.
Comment linking /hazel.php
on “Show HN: Set OS X files and folders to self-destruct based on tag”I wanted this natively supported for ever. For now, I use Hazel* to sync every change inside an dropbox folder into an app folder. It works, but you know... * http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel
Comment linking /hazel
on “The Dropbox Shared Folder API Beta”An automated file system handler, similar to Hazel[1]. I want to treat my Downloads folder (or some other one) like an "Inbox" where I can just dump everything, and then the program knows where exactly in my (Johnny Decimal) file system the file should land. [1] https://www.noodlesoft.com/
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on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)”If you are looking to automate some of your chores on your Mac, Hazel is good solution for a small price. Not related but am a happy customer. https://www.noodlesoft.com
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on “I don't need to clean up my desktop and downloads folders in macOS (2021)”If watch folders are very important to you you might look at Hazel ( http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php ), which is like a more tolerable implementation of Folder Actions. It has a "Import into iTunes" action built in, and can be set to recurse subfolders. If iTunes is set to copy files on import, Hazel can be told to trash the original. I wouldn't recommend it for just that, but even if it doesn't strike your fanc…
Comment linking /hazel.php
on “Ask HN: So, what's wrong with iTunes? (or what more would you want?)”The phrase "too little, too late" springs to mind. Also the phrases "crippling hubris", "halfhearted sop", "internecine bloodletting" ( http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/26/HNflair_1.html ) and "hat-trick" ( http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/javaorigin.html , http://www.noodlesoft.com/blog/2007/01/23/the-sun-also-sets/ ). Now it's quite likely those horrible inklings are wrong. Maybe JavaFX is a clever sp…
Comment linking /blog/2007/01/23/the-sun-also-sets/
on “Sun's answer to Ajax, Microsoft Silverlight”I know on Mac the popular tool for automatic file sorting is Hazel https://www.noodlesoft.com/manual/hazel/hazel-overview/
Comment linking /manual/hazel/hazel-overview/
on “Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive”In OS X, I use Hazel to do just this. http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php
Comment linking /hazel.php
on “Startup Idea : Clean my Download folder ”My irccloud.com subscription is about 60€/year. I've spent two weeks with the cheapest tiers of Claude Pro + pi.dev+GPT-5.5 (+ some deepseek-v4 via openrouter recently) to create my own bespoke version. I'm at 90% feature parity currently and surpassed on some levels. For ~20€-ish I've soon replaced a 60€/year subscription service. I haven't spent a single second thinking about how someone else might run it, it does…
Comment linking /whats-new-in-hazel-6/
on “A Desktop Made for One”Ephemeral like a table quickly hacked together for a specific purpose. It can hold a single flower pot, will fall over if a kid tries to climb on it, is made from wood that's delicious to dogs and most likely won't last 25 years because it wasn't finished properly. But the person who made it needed a table for a flower pot, doesn't have kids or pets and will happily build a new one in 10 years when the old one break…
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on “Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI”Automator and AppleScript are the top two automation tools on macOS. Automator is the more user-friendly of the two; provides a visual workflow interface for chaining together tasks and capabilities. AppleScript is Apple's attempt at natural-language scripting. Between the two, there's very little you can't automate on Mac, although both have counter-intuitive idiosyncrasies that can be frustrating. One of the best…
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on “Ask HN: What are some macOS automation tips and tricks?”
