Moving Hazel completely to a new Mac

I'm wondering that I didn't find anything about this here in the forum…

I've got Hazel installed, watching some 100 folders, and with a bunch of rules. Now, I want to move everything to a new Mac. On the new Mac, the volumes/partitions have the same names as on the old one, and the folder structure is exactly the same as well.

How can I move "the whole thing" to the new Mac, without having to define all the watched folders and rules again? Or, which data has to be copied/moved from my (old) library?

Thanks for every hint!

You can try copying over the following:

- In your Library/Preferences, the files starting with com.noodlesoft
- In your Library/Application Support, the Hazel folder

Now, it may or may not work since a lot of internal stuff is stored as aliases. As a backup, I suggest exporting all your rules. If the above doesn't work, you can re-create your folder list and then import your rules back in to the appropriate folders.

Hi Mr. Noodle,

I copied the related files as instructed, and run a few quick tests. It seems that everything is fine. Thanks a lot!

Great application, great support!

Hi

How about if we didn't export each folder's rules beforehand?

(Also, could there not at least be a global export that exports all folders and their rules?)

Cheers,

Chris

You can export all your rules at once. That said, the settings (including the list of folders) is not exportable at the moment. The rules files do not store the folder they came from so that you can use them in other folders.

I'm currently playing around with FineReader Pro and applescript, using GUI scripting. It seems to be doable. I've got something that basically works, though it's not terribly elegant or robust. I'd be happy to share when/if I can produce a more reliable version.

I had a SSD crash, and decided to do a clean install of Yosemite instead of a restore from backup. I managed to get my automation software installed (TextExpander, Keyboard Maestro). But with Hazel, moving the preferences/application support folder files from the old hard disk don't work. I guess I should have "Exported Rules" earlier, but didn't, because this was an unexpected crash. I have backups, but am reluctant to boot from them (external USB 3 and spinning hard disks—so slow).

I'm redoing my Hazel rules, and don't mind it too much (lots of cruft there as well). But was wondering whether Hazel could automatically maintain a text/RTF file with all my rules in a readable format, strictly as a memory aid. This would be easily retrievable from my backups, and simplify this redoing process. As an option, this could be stored in Dropbox.

I quite like Hazel. This is a feature request, not a complaint.

Before reinstating the above files, make sure you kill all Hazel processes as well as cfprefsd. The last one is particularly important as it caches preferences and may overwrite the ones on disk (that you just reinstated) with the ones it had cached.

That said, you can also export the rules.