Lots of false positives

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Moderator: Mr_Noodle

Lots of false positives Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:13 pm • by vco1
Recently I'm getting a lot of false positives for my rules.

For example when adding a zip or ics file to my downloads folder, a rule that checks for pdf is triggered.

The logfile shows:
Could not retrieve metadata for file: <filename or foldername>

Hwre <filename or foldername> is the actual file or folder name. As can been seen from the above example, this file not just occurs with files, buut also with folders that are added to the downloads folder.

Hazel: 5.0.5
macOS: 11.2.1 (Big Sur)

This seems to have started fairly recently. Any idea what could be wrong? And even better, how to fix this?
vco1
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:04 pm

Re: Lots of false positives Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:40 am • by Mr_Noodle
That error indicates that Spotlight is not indexing those files. You will need to diagnose your Spotlight index to fix that.

Errors like that will not cause the rule to match. If you are getting false positives, it's probably because it is matching a later rule because this rule failed. You may want to consider adding conditions to that later rule to prevent this.
Mr_Noodle
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Location: New York City

Re: Lots of false positives Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:42 am • by vco1
Thanks. I performed a rebuild of the Spotlight index (through OnyX) and it looks like this fixed the issues.
vco1
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:04 pm


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