Hazel not running rule automatically

Hazel does not appear to be running my rules automatically. I have made no changes to my rules. If I go into system preferences Hazel will start and the rules work fine. But if I just put a file in the folder hazel is supposed to watch, nothing happens. Used to work perfectly. I think I may have done an update to Hazel recently and that might be when it stopped working. I am on v3.1.5

Go to the "Info" section and click "View Log". Watch the logs and add a file to the folder. If you do not see activity in the logs then the file events are broken. Try renaming the folder in question and renaming it back. If you do see activity but it doesn't do what you expect, then look at the logs to see what it's actually doing and figure out why it isn't doing what you want.

Than you for the information. I was using the Downloads folder so was unable to rename it. But based on what you said, I tried moving all my rules look at a different folder, then moved them back to look at the Downloads folder. Seems to have fixed it. Thanks!

I am experiencing the same problem.

One particular folder that I am monitoring does not run its rules when files are added. It does seem to run rules eventually, after a long time of waiting which is very inconvenient. I guess there are fallback timer based conditions that Hazel will look at to determine when it should run rules?

For example, looking at the log it last ran at 3:36 AM this morning, then 9:25 PM last night, but 3 new files were added since 3:36 AM (it's now 8:29 AM) and I also manually added a new file while watching the log and nothing happened.

I tried renaming the folder and renaming it back, but it made no difference.

Other rulesets for other folders have less obvious effects so maybe I'm just not noticing.

I also copied all my rules to a different folder, removed them from the original folder and copied the rules back to the original folder. That did seem to work and now when I create a folder, the rules run. But why did this happen, and how can I prevent it from happening again, or be sure that my other rules are working as expected?

Same thing was happening for another watched folder. I just didn't notice until now. It last ran at 3:36 AM this morning, and 9:24 PM last night before that. I opened Hazel, and just clicked the checkbox off and on again for one of the rules. Within a minute later, the rules started running again.

Actually, looking at the log it seems almost all of my watched folders were last processed at 3:36 AM this morning. So maybe none of them are listening for fsevents?

I'm guessing that Hazel runs a roughly 6 hourly timer for watched folders, from the time Hazel is first started, and something has caused Hazel to stop listening for fsevents for some or all of the watched folders?

Please email support so I can send you a test build which should provide more diagnostics.

I'm having the EXACT same problem. I'll add a file to a watched folder and nothing will happen. If I open up the Hazel pref pane and do a "run rules now" it will run the rule on that folder, but I could let it sit for hours and nothing will happen. I can definitely say this doesn't happen for EVERY rule, just some of them. I've also tried renaming the folder and renaming it back, but that didn't help.

I've been having this problem recently running Hazel 4.0.5 I've tried the things suggested above. Removing the watched folder, re-adding it then assigning the rules again, and changing the name of the watched folder then changing it back. When I manually run the rules everything works fine. These rules were recently migrated from a different computer, perhaps that has something to do with it? This problem seems to be occurring with two of my watched folders. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Did you check the logs? Also, can you provide details about the watched folder? Is it a Dropbox folder? A network share?

Mr_Noodle wrote:Did you check the logs? Also, can you provide details about the watched folder? Is it a Dropbox folder? A network share?

Thanks for your response. The watched folder is a local folder not a network share, it is not a Dropbox folder. When I check the log the suspicious line that stands out is this:

17:03:56.105 hazelworker[9074] File 315034.xml is busy. Skipping for now.

The the watch folder is being written to by a web application that writes an XML file with file renaming information that Hazel uses to rename files. The XML is only 300 bytes. Is it possible that spotlight is trying to inventory the file while Hazel is trying to access it, and that's causing a conflict? This workflow was working flawlessly for years, and has only started to have problems after we migrated it to a new computer with OS X 10.11.6 and Hazel 4.0.5

Well, some program is keeping the file open. You can try What's Keeping Me to see what program that is.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Well, some program is keeping the file open. You can try What's Keeping Me to see what program that is.

"What's keeping me" didn't return any results, and the log isn't showing any activity when the XML file arrives, but when I preview the rule it matches, and when I force it to run it works fine.

This is the folder that Hazel is monitoring, and there's no activity when the XML file arrives.

2016-09-02 10:35:44.249 hazelworker[12178] Processing folder imagestore
2016-09-02 10:35:46.354 hazelworker[12178] Done processing folder imagestore

When I enable debug I find messages like this in the log:

2016-09-02 10:44:51.966 hazelworker[12395] DEBUG: Skipped /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore/Themostawesomeimageever.tif. File/folder not part of change set/file event.

This also came up in the log:
2016-09-02 14:34:03.235 hazelworker[13750] DEBUG: Skipped /Users/server/.Trash/315116.xml. File/folder not part of change set/file event.
path = "<ComNoodlesoft_NoodlePathSet: 0x7fce0ad02050>\n /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore/315116.xml : 0\n";
2016-09-02 14:35:25.015 hazelworker[13755] DEBUG: 315116.xml: Did not match any rules.

Any other insights? Thanks again.

Well, it's showing activity. It's just not matching anything. Is the skipped file one of the files that should be processed? If not, then I'd ignore that message.

Also, a bit confused about the last message as it shows the file in the trash. Is it possible something is throwing the file away before Hazel gets to it?

Mr_Noodle wrote:Well, it's showing activity. It's just not matching anything. Is the skipped file one of the files that should be processed? If not, then I'd ignore that message.

Also, a bit confused about the last message as it shows the file in the trash. Is it possible something is throwing the file away before Hazel gets to it?

Ok, it's possible I didn't grab the right thing from the log. I continue to have the problem where I need to force the rule to run. The curious line in this debug log entry is "folder not part of change set". Does that give you any clues? The rule is attached to the folder "imagestore". Perhaps this is an order of operations issue? The Tiff file shows up first and then the xml file with the renaming information, but Hazel thinks it has already processed the tiff file so it doesn't do anything?

2016-09-07 16:22:06.518 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Could not find entry for download in Chrome preference file.
2016-09-07 16:22:06.519 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Unexpected type for Mail download URL: (null)
2016-09-07 16:22:06.524 hazelworker[30573] Processing folder imagestore
2016-09-07 16:22:06.524 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Pausing to wait for things to settle down.
2016-09-07 16:22:08.525 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Processing directories: (
"/Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore"
)
2016-09-07 16:22:08.529 HazelHelper[98643] DEBUG: Checking events for path /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore, folder imagestore
2016-09-07 16:22:08.530 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Received file event: {
date = "2016-09-07 23:22:06 +0000";
path = "<ComNoodlesoft_NoodlePathSet: 0x7f83acb1ae30>\n /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore/315359b.xml : 0\n /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore/315359.xml : 0\n";
}
2016-09-07 16:22:08.530 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: About to process directory /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore
2016-09-07 16:22:08.532 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: .DS_Store: File is hidden/invisible. Skipping.
2016-09-07 16:22:08.533 hazelworker[30573] DEBUG: Skipped /Users/server/NWBatchJobs/imagestore/090616_MattMuchTest_70685_476_A.tif. File/folder not part of change set/file event.

It appears this is an order of operations issue. I'm able to get the desired behavior when the xml file is already in the folder, and I add the Tiff to that same folder, but not when tif is already in the folder, and I add the xml. I've tried to add a rule to run on the folder if it is modified, but that hasn't worked. Any suggestions appreciated.