Trouble getting Go into subfolder to work
Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2025 4:09 amHi everyone,
I’m building an automated photo-processing workflow with Hazel, but I’ve run into a structural limitation, and I’d like to confirm whether there’s a clean, supported way to solve it.
I have one monitored folder: /Pictures/
Rule 1:
Detects new image files (jpg, heic)
Sorts into subfolder with pattern Pictures [date created (yyyy)]>[date created (yyyy-mm-dd)]
resulting in a new folder with the images in it e.g. /Pictures/Pictures 2025/2025-01-01
This folder does not exist before Hazel creates it.
After the folder is created and files are placed into it, I want...
Rule 2: to run a shell script, but on the new folder itself, not on the individual images.
That script performs recursive date-fixing and renaming inside the subfolder.
The challenge I have here is that Rule 1 fires for each new image, but I want Rule 2 to only fire once for the new folder. I also would like to avoid having to monitor each year's folder individually as that becomes unwieldy pretty quickly.
I have added a Go into subfolder rule between Rule 1 and Rule 2 containing the "Run rules on folder contents" action, as described in the documentation. But I cannot seem to get it to do what I want. It either processes every single sub-folder (thousands over decades of pictures) and locks up hazelworker for hours, or I set the rules too tight, and it doesn't do anything.
Is there a way to trigger my Rule 2 on the newly created sub-folder?
Thanks in advance for your help.
I’m building an automated photo-processing workflow with Hazel, but I’ve run into a structural limitation, and I’d like to confirm whether there’s a clean, supported way to solve it.
I have one monitored folder: /Pictures/
Rule 1:
Detects new image files (jpg, heic)
Sorts into subfolder with pattern Pictures [date created (yyyy)]>[date created (yyyy-mm-dd)]
resulting in a new folder with the images in it e.g. /Pictures/Pictures 2025/2025-01-01
This folder does not exist before Hazel creates it.
After the folder is created and files are placed into it, I want...
Rule 2: to run a shell script, but on the new folder itself, not on the individual images.
That script performs recursive date-fixing and renaming inside the subfolder.
The challenge I have here is that Rule 1 fires for each new image, but I want Rule 2 to only fire once for the new folder. I also would like to avoid having to monitor each year's folder individually as that becomes unwieldy pretty quickly.
I have added a Go into subfolder rule between Rule 1 and Rule 2 containing the "Run rules on folder contents" action, as described in the documentation. But I cannot seem to get it to do what I want. It either processes every single sub-folder (thousands over decades of pictures) and locks up hazelworker for hours, or I set the rules too tight, and it doesn't do anything.
Is there a way to trigger my Rule 2 on the newly created sub-folder?
Thanks in advance for your help.