More Tips for fence-sitter?

I've been a bit surprised at the lack of examples I could find for Hazel rules. A shame, because I could use some inspiration.

See, I'm currently running the evaluation version, and even though I have mac-app-buy-itis, I find it hard to justify buying Hazel just for my downloads folder, trash and appzapper function. I'm a poor student, and I recently spent some cash on Journler (another great app!)

And yet I'm sure the app is capable of much more. Would anyone care to give me examples of how the app can be used for other purposes?

My main difficulty at the moment is that I love the tool, and believe I can use it, and that it might even turn out indispensable in its most basic form. But I'm still on the fence, and I can't really think of creative ways to use it.

Regardless of whether I buy it or not, my compliments for such a slick, cool application

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I've been meaning to do a separate Hazel tips blog where I would post tips, rules and examples. Hopefully I'll have that set up sooner rather than later.

For now, though, I assume you have at least loaded up the sample rules? You should have been prompted for them when you first launched it but you can still load them via the "gear" pull-down menu below the rules list.

Those rules should at least show you how to do some basic housekeeping of certain files as well as how to manage files based on their age. You can add rules to manage files/folders based on size (like automatically throw away empty folders or color a file/folder if it's too big) or do a special workflow for files you downloaded from a specific site (only with Safari or Mail). It depends on what kind of workflow you want to set up for it.

Also Google around. There have been a few blog articles here and there with examples. For example, this Kinkless article has a downloadable set of rules.

Here's a couple of rules that I have set up that may be of interest....

- A rule that monitors my /Volumes folder, so when I plug in or mount certain volumes or thumbdrives, it triggers various Chronosync or SuperDuper backup or synchronization tasks. They actually load Automator workflows (saved as applications) that prompt me whether I want to proceed with the backup or not, and then open the backup task if I click "Yes"

- I moved to a file tagging system rather than a folder structure a few months ago, so now when I create a file I save it to a DropBox folder. A Hazel rule monitors the folder and opens an Automator workflow which pops up a box to enter Spotlight Comments, I enter my tagging scheme comments, and the workflow applies the comments and moves the file to my "Tagged" folder

Hope these help to get you off the fence

I recently discovered an interesting way to use hazel that I don't think has been posted here before but is proving very useful for me.

I have 5-10 files on my desktop at all times, which I have been manually deleting or moving once I notice they should be dealt with. However, the moment they reach the desktop I usually know about how long before I won't need them there anymore, so I set up a simple file expiring system like this:

1. I mark the file with a color label that I named "Expire in 2 days", or 4, or a week, or 6 hours.
2. Hazel removes the label and adds a tag with the amount of time till expiry to the spotlight comment.
3. Once the expiry date pops up, hazel labels the file red, noting that it is about to expire.

If it's 2 days past the expiry date, the file is trashed by hazel. For files with my name in them or a few other criteria that mark possibly important files, it leaves an alias to the file on the desktop that is renamed to let me know that the file is in the trash.

Thus, my desktop is now totally clean automatically, leaving less cleaning for me.

Also, I made a dedicated torrents folder in my home directory, and hazel makes aliases to the torrents on my desktop once they finish, so for the ones I want easy access to, I automatically have it, and for others I just trash the alias and clean out my torrents folder later.

Another tip.
I keep folders in my download folder for Applications, media and documents. I then have Hazel monitor the downloads folder and move downloaded files accordingly. Music is actually sent straight to iTunes, but anyway, I digress.
After it unzips any files, it moves them to their respective folder. If these folders have a files size > 0 it applies a blue label so I know there is something in there. Once I move the files out it then removes the label.

It's a small thing, but it provides a very nice visual indicator on which folders contain items that require attention.

Hazel watches my drop box folder for any additions. If anyone adds files to the drop box, Hazel opens the folder, reveals the file and sends me a Growl message.