I’m so happy to throw money at this dev. I don’t know how much time Hazel saved me, but it is a lot. Everyone is talking about Inbox zero but this piece of software helped me to achieve Downloads folder zero which is something I wouldn’t have done without it.
I’m happy about all the new functions, especially that it now can read PDFs without OCR. The pause function will also make some rules easier for me.
How about you? Are you using Hazel? What do you use it for? Anything I didn’t think of yet maybe?
For me, Hazel is a great app—a kind of unsung hero of automation. It just chugs along in the background taking care of busy work for me and making me forget it’s even there. (“It” meaning both the app and the busy work.) My most robust use case for it is sorting the bureaucracy of life: bills, statements, and other PDFs I seem to steadily accumulate, which it renames based on file content and then moves to DEVONthink. Hat tip to the MacSparky Field Guide for Hazel, which helped me to these automations up and running a few years back.
I teach at a university and need to download a lot of student paper submissions from the Canvas LMS. I update a set of Hazel rules each semester and then I use it all semester long to rename student assignment submissions to a file name of assignment-student name
, which is preferable to the long file name Canvas assigns it or the generic ones students often use (“paper d1”). A small thing, but when dealing with hundreds of documents over a semester, it’s really useful.
One thing I’ve been meaning to do is to create a rule to simply rename a file with the document title, which is often the first line of a document, but not always. I often read journal articles and other texts where the file names aren’t helpful at all. I know there is a metadata property called “Title,” but that is often empty or has text that doesn’t correspond to the title. One for the to do list.
In any case, I’d also like to know what others are using it for.
Instant upgrade for me. This software is an essential part of my “invisible workflow” and just keeps delivering benefits. My most recent:
- I download an invoice from a contractor, which Hazel then renames based on interior name and date (multiple possible formats) of the billed period. The file then gets copied/filed to multiple places, Hazel opens a Google Sheet for me to record summary data, opens Acrobat for me to apply my stamp and signature, and finally moves everything out of the way.
- I have a educational Zoom recordings to manage. I download the files from Zoom, place them in a folder with a predefined code by course. After I am done editing the video, I label the whole folder in macOS and based on the predefined code, the folder gets moved to Google Drive to one of about 12 different locations on Google Drive (mirrored to my Mac in Finder).
Saves minutes—and more importantly, errant clicks—each time. The new feature will handle the one snag I encounter with a contractor: not having an OCR layer on the file.
Love this app!
I work almost exclusively on an iPad and keep most of my files on Google Drive. But the files I don’t want online get uploaded to iCloud Drive where Hazel sorts and/or renames them then moves them to an EagleFiler library on my Mac.
It is a very simple system. But I know as soon as the files disappear from iCloud Drive that they are on my Mac and will be backed up via Arq within the hour.
Primarily it looks at every new file in Downloads and the (ScanSnap) scanner folder, OCRs if necessary, renames, tags as to examine, and moves to numerous possible destinations on my server Mac.
However it also:
- Downloads that aren’t moved are tagged if they sit around for several days so I know I have to manually move or delete them.
- Mail Downloads are moved to the trash after two days. Since they are attachments, if the email is saved the downloads are still saved as part of the email message.
- Screen snapshots are renamed and tagged.
- Receipts put in iCloud from my iPhone are moved to my local Download folder where they will be processed again by Hazel.
- Files/folders on the desktop that are tagged “Sticky” are left untouched, while any other files/folders are moved to one of two separate folders after two days. This keeps the desktop neat.
- When I create a Quicken backup, it gets zipped and moved to the server.
- Cash Register receipts are deleted after 90 days.
Nice ideas here:
Downloads that aren’t moved are tagged if they sit around for several days so I know I have to manually move or delete them.
Files/folders on the desktop that are tagged “Sticky” are left untouched, while any other files/folders are moved to one of two separate folders after two days. This keeps the desktop neat.
I bought Hazel 5 but didn’t find much use for it. One of the reasons is that I have to remember to detach bills, invoices, etc from my email to the Downloads folder for it to start its work. After a while, I never bother downloading and just kept in the email. My question is, does Hazel 5 or 6 reads Mail.app and download automatically?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t process mail. It would be fantastic if it did! I just click print–>print to PDF into the Download folder and then it takes over. But there is that unfortunate manual step.
I am not refering to the body of the email but auto-download the attachments. That still requires a manual step, right?
Would it work to use a mail rule that runs AppleScript?
This script is modified from the DevonThink script that automatically grabs attachments. It saves the attachment to Downloads but you could give it any path (or have multiple scripts that dump files in different folders.)
-- Mail Rule - Add attachments to ~/Downloads
-- Modified version of script by Christian Grunenberg
using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
tell application "Mail"
set theFolder to (POSIX path of (path to home folder)) & "Downloads/"
repeat with theMessage in theMessages
repeat with theAttachment in mail attachments of theMessage
try
if downloaded of theAttachment then
set theFile to theFolder & (name of theAttachment)
tell theAttachment to save in theFile
end if
end try
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
In Mail > Preferences > Rules, create a new rule, and for the AppleScript hit Open in Finder and save your script there using Script Editor.
Beautiful. I’ll test it out. If this works, I will be able to use Hazel 5 again.
It will only extract attachments based on the mail condition, such as Sender contains “XYZ Bank” or will it do for all?
Hope it works! It needs some kind of condition, but it can be broad, e.g. if your email address is one of the recipients.
I can confirm the AppleScript above works! Thank you so much, @cornchip. Now I am going to try Hazel again!
Hazel is pretty cool except when, and this isn’t Hazel’s fault, the rule needs to move a file to my NAS and the destination SMB/CIFS volume isn’t mounted .
I installed an application called Automounter to try and keep them mounted, but they will intermittently disconnect and not reconnect when my Macbook wakes from sleep.
Rebooting fixes the issue, but I’ll lucky if I get 1 hour a day to use my personal Mac, so I try to make the time count. I spend about 10 hours a day on my employer’s laptop, so it’s hard to squeeze in time to use my own.
The new version of Hazel doesn’t bring anything new to the table that I find useful. Having said that, I’ll upgrade to support the developer. Hazel is a great app that’s really useful without being obtrusive.
I also enjoy finding new ways to use it, as in this case thanks to Cornchip’s script.
If I drag and drop an attachment from Mail to Finder, I get a nice envelope icon. I believe this icon is just a tag.
So, I am wondering whether I can tag the attachments via the same Apple Script, after saving.
(technically, Hazel is the perfect tool to do this. But, I’ve sent Hazel to watch this folder called Inbox. I drop files into Inbox from the Mac, iPhone and iPad. And now, Mail attachments are dropped here too. I don’t want Hazel to tag an envelope to these. )
I noticed that my rules that had a Source URL condition stopped working. Anyone knows if in Sequoia the “Where from” metadata got removed? (I use Safari.)
Can you share your Hazel rule for how this works? I’m not a fan of all of those random folders in my Library for attachments from mail. I forget to go delete them from time to time.