Unpredictable delay before Hazel runs a rule

Does anyone else find that Hazel sometimes waits many minutes or hours before running a rule?

This is a sharp contrast to Hazel's normal behaviour, which is to run rules within just a few seconds. As far as I'm aware, Hazel doesn't crash or hang. It just waits, and sometimes seems to give up altogether.

I'm using Hazel 5.0.6 on macOS 11.2.3 on a 2015 MacBook Pro. However, I'm sure I saw a similar thing with Mojave (I didn't do Catalina), and possibly with Hazel 4, all on the same machine.

Of course I sometimes make mistakes in setting up rules (or the creators of the PDFs I'm trying to file decide to change something), but in the cases I'm talking about the rules are valid. The "Rule Status" command shows that a rule matches the file it's supposed to, and "Run Rules Now" almost always works.

Can you check the logs? Either email or post them, but make sure to include (a) the name of a specific file that isn't being processed and (b) the time it was supposed to be processed.

Regarding this issue, I am having a similar if not identical problem. I can scan a document and verify that the rules match but the document just sits there. So far, I haven’t tried waiting any more that 15 to 20 minutes. However, if I select “Run Rules Now”, the documents are processed correctly.

Here are four documents that are currently sitting in folder that Hazel should be processing.

2021-04-07-0001.pdf
2021-04-07-0002.pdf
2021-04-07-0003.pdf
2021-04-07-0004.pdf

I have the log file but don't see how to attach it to this post. I did notice 4 lines near the bottom of the log that talk about “Attempted to run worker on underplayed folder:” Have idea if that is involved.

This issue only started occurring after I started using version 5.

Ah, if you are getting that error then your folders are somehow disconnected from Hazel. In that case, I suggest doing the following procedure for each folder:

- Export your rules
- Remove the folder from Hazel
- Add the folder back into Hazel
- Import your rules and re-enable.

GreatI That seems to have fixed it for me.

Thanks for the help.