Hazel Rule Examples

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I am in charge of all of our household documents (family of 5 plus small biz), so I use Hazel like a maniac!

All my stuff starts in 1 of 2 folders:

  1. Dropbox folder called “docs-file”
  2. Downloads – a weigh station-- Hazel OCRs any PDFs via script using PDFPenPro app and then moves the files to “docs-file”
    I try to limit incoming to those. Most of my Hazel rules are in “docs-file” folder.

My stuff gets into those folders in a few ways:

  1. PDFs I take from the internet (useful for statements) – I have a shortcut key to get these into PDF format from Safari. I put this in the “downloads” folder so it gets OCR’d
  2. IFTTT rule that saves any attachments from my gmail to my “docs-file” folder. (Any email attachments from other email accounts gets forwarded to my gmail via Airmail Rules)
  3. Scansnap sends OCR’d paper files directly to “docs-file” folder

Some Hazel rules I use heavily:

  • Household files: statements, bills – the usual suspects that come in monthly. Hazel renames these and then files them to either folders on Dropbox or else directly into Devonthink group (via Applescript).

  • Photos - Hazel looks for extensions and automatically imports personal videos and photos into my Photos app repository.

  • Tags to OmniFocus – some files I need to act on get embedded into OmniFocus. I assign an “OmniMe”" tag, so Hazel sees the tag and embeds the file into a new OF task via applescript.

  • Other Tags: For shorter term projects I am working on, I assign a tag to move the document into that project’s folder. So I’ll have tags like “Christmas” or “2017 Taxes”. Hazel doesn’t need to rename the file, but just consolidate it in a folder with the other project materials.

  • Keywords embedded into file names. Some files don’t get renamed, but have keywords so Hazel knows what to do with them. “Maintenance” and “Medical Receipt” and “Receipt” and “Manual” are keywords I use a lot.

  • “Invitation” keyword: I make sure all our invitations get into a shared family Dropbox folder. I name the file with the date of the event and add “invitation” at the end. Hazel looks for this keyword, moves the invite to the family folder, and then creates a new Fantastical event on the event date in our Family Calendar with the info from the file’s name. I have to manually attach the pdf to the calendar event and add in the start/end times. (I also use Hazel to archive past events from this folder so it is not junked up with old stuff.)

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