Chrome loses contact with downloaded files after Hazel move

I switched to Chrome for a a variety of reasons. One of the things I miss is the hack that stores each day's downloads in a date-stamped folder. Enter Hazel. Now, however, poking the downloads from Chrome's download page (or elsewhere, i.e., show in finder).

Now, if you move a file manually in this same context, some magic happens where the OS keeps track of the new location, but it appears that Hazel does not.

Is this the expected behavior?

I have to look at Chrome again but last I checked, it had no good way for Hazel to detect it is downloading a file. If there were, Hazel would not touch the file until it's finished. As far as tracking the file, it depends on what mechanism Chrome is using. Ideally, though, Chrome really should use the common file locking that OS X uses (BSD advisory locking) if not a more explicit scheme. For instance, Safari and Firefox (most of the time, at least) have their own extensions for the files to indicate they are not complete and Hazel will stay away until they are done.

The best long term solution is to bug the Chrome team to do this. In the short term, you can add a condition like "Date added is not in the last 10 minutes". You would have to tweak the time but basically not have Hazel process the file until it's been a while (hopefully long enough for the file to download fully).

D'oh. I should've checked this against the latest version before posting. It appears now Chrome does save incomplete downloads with a crdownload extension. I'll add a feature request for Hazel to recognize this.

In the meantime, you can add a rule as follows:

If extension is crdownload, Ignore file

Make this the first rule in your list and Hazel won't touch the file until it's done.