Sometimes Newton's Law of Inertia is just as applicable to the digital world as to the physical. All too often our files sit around never to be filed. Downloads and other sundry files pile up never to leave. Fortunately, an uncluttered desktop can be a reality.

Meet Hazel, your personal housekeeper.

Hazel works on whatever folders you tell it to, automatically organizing your files according to the rules you create. It features a rule interface similar to that of Apple Mail so you should feel right at home. Have Hazel move files around based on name, date, what site/email address it came from (Safari and Mail only) and much more. Keep your downloads off the desktop and put them where they need to be.

Hazel can open, archive, set color labels and add Spotlight comments. And in Hazel 2, you can now have Hazel rename your files or sort them into subfolders based on name, date or whatever combination of attributes you choose. Hazel 2 gives you the ability to create even more powerful workflows than ever before.

Download Hazel 2.2.2 in Softonic

Indigo can literally control and automate all processes in your home. HAL 9000 anyone?

To be honest Indigo isn't as frightening as the artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The program can actually become quite useful, if you have the patience to learn how to use it, and like any true geek, dream of controlling every switch in your home from your Mac.

Via the client/server architecture, you can gain remote access to devices in your home like lights, alarms or computers. You'll certainly need to have a good level of knowledge to learn how to establish connection between devices.

From Indigo's interface, it's fairly easy to know what actions to trigger, set launch times and dates and even organize actions by groups. The separate log window also ensures you always have a record of what actions you performed. An added plus: Indigo comes with a widget to control your home from your Dashboard

If you have enough technological skills, Indigo can enable you to automate hardware in your home all from the comfort of your Mac.

Download Indigo 3.0.4 in Softonic

Can you hear your MacBook's fan whirring a bit too loud? This means that your Mac is overheating and that you are putting too much strain on it. This can be caused by applications that use up a lot of your computer's resources or is simply the result of having your Mac on for too much time.

Fan Control lets you adjust your fan's speed and thresholds to adapt it best to your Mac's current temperature. Thanks to sliders, you can set the lower and upper thresholds and base speed. A graph on the right of the interface shows you the speed to temperature ratio. If you move the different settings around, you'll see it adapts, never passing the original automatic fan speed.

Although it might be a bit difficult to tell which speed and thresholds are right for you, you can try out a few settings and see if your fan stops making sounds.

Fan Control is a handy preferences pane which allows you to adjust fan speed and thresholds to your MacBook's temperature.

Download Fan Control 1.1 in Softonic

For those of you that spend a major part of their day writing, having a good program to create and save abbreviations can be a real lifesaver. Typinator is one among many such applications but stands out thanks to its ease of use and functionalities.

Typinator is easily accessible from your menu bar. Once you open up the program window you'll see you can create your own set of abbreviations. Just type in the corresponding text in the box at the bottom of the window and enter the abbreviation. You can save all these in different sets, which are ordered at the top of the interface.

Although the program is limited to English, French and German it features really thorough correction sets for the three languages, which should ensure you don't make any typos.

Typinator integrates perfectly in any word processing program and will read imported snippet files from similar applications like Textexpander or TypeIt4Me.

Simple to use and great to store all sorts of abbreviations, Typinator will save you loads of time when typing up documents.

Download Typinator 3.1 in Softonic

This free little application is good to have around if you forget to save or if you haven't activated autosave in your applications. SaveCircle allows you to set a countdown and auto save for you.

The application offers two choices for auto save: every frontmost applications or the application of your choice. I recommend to leave it for every application as that way you need not worry about which one is saved or not. Just slide the switch (similar to the Time Machine switch) to On to get SaveCircle running.

Pressing File from the menu bar will allow you to modify the countdown by minutes or hours. The countdown can appear in the application or be detached. Unfortunately there isn't any easy way to set it by seconds though.

Most applications you use should have auto save running. If not, and if you find yourself forgetting to save your documents, SaveCircle can be a blessing.

Download SaveCircle 1.0 in Softonic

Power Manager is the energy saving solution for Mac OS X. Use Power Manager to ensure your Mac's power needs match your lifestyle. Through Power Manager's schedule you can automate when your Mac is on, off, awake, asleep, and secured.

Creating a schedule is fast and easy with the new Schedule Assistant. The assistant quickly creates a custom schedule to suit your lifestyle. Schedules for all computer lifestyles are catered for: office, school, laboratory, museum, or just for your home Mac.

Download DssW Power Manager 3.7.2 in Softonic

Time Machine will be available with Leopard, but for those of you itching to get your hands on it you can set up TimeDrawer on your Mac. This application, accessible from the preferences pane, lets you make backups of your files and go back to old versions, not matter the number of changes you've applied to it. The application offers two browser views, a more traditional window style and a widget like illumination view. We really like the side scrolling in the latter view, as it clearly shows you the different versions of files and when each one was saved. One minor little drawback with it is that it tends to pop up every now and then for no reason.

TimeDrawer lets you apply rules to filter through your files and you can adjust the size of your database to save backups and when records can be deleted. This application is the ideal way to manage different versions of files. What's more, it's discreetly placed right in your preferences pane.

Download TimeDrawer 1.2 in Softonic

iSleep features a sleep timer coupled with an optional Alarm Clock for iTunes, Whamb, and DVD Player. Just choose for how long you'd like to listen to your music, and, if you want to, set up the alarm clock ; iSleep will care for the rest.

iSleep is very easy to use and it has lot of features. You can, for example, ask iSleep to put your Mac to sleep after the end of the music, and to wake it up in the morning : it can be useful if your Mac is noisy ! But that's just the beginning of the story...

If your Mac has a DVD player, you can also ask iSleep to use a DVD instead of playing music. iSleep will automatically put your Mac to sleep (or shut down it, quit the DVD player... there are many options available) when the film is over !

Download iSleep 2.6.1 in Softonic

Do Something When is a system preference pane that allows the user to watch for drives mounting and un-mounting, allowing them to launch or quit applications, when these events happen. You can launch iTunes when your music hard drive gets mounted, you can quit iTunes when you eject the drive. This is just an example of what can be done.

Download Do Something When 1.2 in Softonic

Power Save Mac is an effective and reliable tool that can control and manage energy throughout an enterprise. Power Save Mac integrates seamlessly with Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) or any other third-party management utility to allow administrators to deploy their power saving configuration package to a single or multiple computers. Power Save Mac’s configuration screen also allows administrators to intelligently control inactive workstations between regularly scheduled action items.

Download Power Save Mac 1.50 in Softonic

iggler is a little freeware app with one purpose: to keep your Mac awake. When you have some lengthy task for your computer to do, it's annoying to have to turn off your screensaver and turn off the sleep timer, only to have to turn it all back on again when you're done. (The "never sleep" corner will keep your screensaver from kicking in, but still won't prevent your machine from falling asleep.) What you really want is a little helper who will bump your mouse every once in a while to keep your machine alert. That's Jiggler.

Jiggler just wiggles your mouse every once in a while, keeping your machine awake and happy. When you want to stay awake, run it. When you don't want to, quit it. You can even run it while you're working, because you can set it not to wiggle your mouse unless your computer has been sitting idle for a while. Or you can configure it to:

• Jiggle only when your machine is busy working, to make sure it doesn't fall asleep in the middle of a long job
• Jiggle whenever an unburned CD or DVD is inserted, to make sure it doesn't fall asleep while burning
• Jiggle whenever iTunes is playing, so your music doesn't get interrupted
• Jiggle whenever a particular application is running, if there's an app your machine needs to stay awake for!

Download Jiggler 1.3 in Softonic

iKey adds an essential but missing element in Mac OS X, automation! iKey will save you and your company precious time and energy. Its all about efficiency, we call this 'doing less and accomplishing more". iKey can turn some repetitive action that might consist of thousands of mouse clicks (in various applications, in menus and different dialog boxes) and pages of typing into one ikey shortcut that can be launched anytime to perform the exact same action with a simple key press.

Download iKey 2.2.1 b2 in Softonic

Menu Master is a haxie that allows you to change or remove menu shortcut keys in any application with ease. It takes about 15 seconds to learn how to use Menu Master, and saves you lots of time later because you can use the shortcuts you defined and do not bother remembering which ones the developer of the software invented for you. Additionally, you can set shortcuts to any menu item that had no shortcuts, or remove shortcuts from menu items. Menu Master gives you a complete control over your menus, all just for affordable US $10.

Features:

• Assign new shortcut keys to menu items in any application (switch languages quickly with new shortcuts, for example)
• Redefine existing shortcut keys in the menu items to the ones you like and remember;
• Remove unwanted shortcut keys (such as Command-K for Block Pop-Up Windows in Safari)
• Works in Carbon and Cocoa applications
• Easy to configure as it comes in usual Preference Pane form, accessible through System Preferences

Download Menu Master 1.5.1 in Softonic