Noodlesoft Forums

I love Hazel and have several dozen rules set up on my laptop and desktop, most of them synchronised (which is a great feature BTW). As my set of rules grows, one thing that I do find myself wishing for is a better way to organise them. I am thinking of some way of grouping them, perhaps by drive, but ideally self-labelled folders or tags so that, for example, I could easily see the rules I use for managing my photos, or my work files, etc.

The rule ordering affects how they work so any sort of way to organize them that way is a bad idea. First off, I would look into consolidating your rules if possible. Use pattern matching, for example. Otherwise, you can use the rule search feature to quickly filter rules as needed.

I didn't express myself well, sorry. I meant organising the list of folders in the left hand panel.

That might be more doable. That said, if multiple folders share rules and are under a common folder, you can instead monitor that common folder and have Hazel go into subfolders. Search the help for "subfolders" for more details on how to do that.

It wouldn't work for me, because I am thinking about rules that span several disks.

For example, I have a couple of rules that manage photos on my laptop HD, then there are rules that apply to my main photos library on an external drive, plus a backup on another drive. What would be helpful is to focus on a "rule group" that has all my photo rules, or another that has all my "work rules", or "personal rules". Switching them on/off as a group is the most obvious use, but I think it would also be helpful just to have them all together.

Again, are we talking about folders or rules? Also, can you describe why you need to turn them on and off at different points?