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I'm having an issue with Hazel not being able to execute rules on Safari download files. I wanted to create a rule that would see any accidental YouTube downloads and send them to the Trash immediately. The name of videos downloaded from YouTube is always video.mp4, so the resulting incomplete download is video.mp4.download.

I made a rule that looks for files of the type "Safari download" and adds a red label to them. I then initiated a random download and cancelled it in Safari. The resulting debug log output is here:

Code: Select all

2010-03-16 00:06:40.245 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Processing directories: (
    "/Users/matt/Downloads"
)
2010-03-16 00:06:40.246 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: About to process directory /Users/matt/Downloads
2010-03-16 00:06:40.248 hazelfolderwatch[9964] File NewsFire1.6(v84).zip.download is busy. Skipping for now.
2010-03-16 00:06:40.248 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Writing out DB file: /Users/matt/Downloads
2010-03-16 00:06:40.249 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Directory /Users/matt/Downloads processed.
2010-03-16 00:06:40.249 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Sleeping
2010-03-16 00:06:42.249 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: About to process directory /Users/matt/Downloads
2010-03-16 00:06:42.252 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Directory /Users/matt/Downloads processed.
2010-03-16 00:06:42.252 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Sleeping
2010-03-16 00:06:46.252 hazelfolderwatch[9964] DEBUG: Done

Now, whenever I try to apply rules to the Downloads folder or even preview the rules being applied, I can't see the incomplete download. Moving the incomplete download out and then back into the Downloads folder doesn't work either. It's as if Hazel doesn't know it even exists. I have not checked the box to delete incomplete downloads in the Downloads folder. I'm not sure what else to try, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Incomplete downloads are not seen by the rules and are only processed by the checkbox so at the moment there is no way to do what you want. Allowing incomplete downloads be seen by the rules would cause all sorts of havoc so I don't see that changing anytime soon. The only thing I could suggest is checking the option to delete incomplete downloads for you. They may stick around a tad longer than you'd like but they will get purged at some point.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Allowing incomplete downloads be seen by the rules would cause all sorts of havoc so I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Alright, fair enough. Just out of curiosity, what kind of havoc would allowing incomplete downloads to be seen cause? I'm guessing that, because they're mostly managed by Safari, trying to go in and mess around with them in Hazel would be a bad idea.

Mr_Noodle wrote:The only thing I could suggest is checking the option to delete incomplete downloads for you.

That works just fine for me, so that's what I've done.

No one really expects Hazel to process files that are incomplete. It's there as an implicit condition otherwise people would have to always add a condition to exclude those files. If rules were able to apply to incomplete files, you'd get a lot of complaints about Hazel copying a partial file or moving a file and screwing up the app that was saving/downloading it.

Albeit, one could argue for an exception where if the rule explicitly asks for an incomplete file, it will allow Hazel to process it for that one rule. That would require more use cases that would justify such a change to the engine, though.

Mr_Noodle wrote:If rules were able to apply to incomplete files, you'd get a lot of complaints about Hazel copying a partial file or moving a file and screwing up the app that was saving/downloading it.

That makes sense.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Albeit, one could argue for an exception where if the rule explicitly asks for an incomplete file, it will allow Hazel to process it for that one rule.

My main use case is if Hazel sees Safari trying to download that kind of file, I would fire off an AppleScript to end the download. It doesn't seem like Safari can be scripted that way, so I guess until it's possible to access current downloads through AppleScript, I could live without this feature and it definitely would make things a bit more complicated for users just starting out if it were added.