Katie and David cover the latest release of one of their favorite Mac utilities, Hazel 3.0, with the basics and some of their favorite Hazel workflows.
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Links of note
Practically Efficient TextExpander-Hazel Workflow
Merlin Mann on sending sensitive stuff
MacDrifter Imports to Aperture with Hazel
MacSparky on Sorting Documents with Hazel
Google’s Background Noise Patent
How Tom Henderson Divorced Google
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:12 — 39.5MB)
A small side-note about airdrop: You can enable it over Ethernet by running this in the terminal…
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces -bool true
Great episode – thanks!
One note for those of us running PCs at work: There is actually a Hazel knock-off for Windows called Belevedere. It’s not nearly as powerful as Hazel but it’s a start (and it’s free).
http://lifehacker.com/belvedere/
David and Katie,
Hi – I’m the Michael you mentioned in your podcast.
The reason is that I use the UNIX touch command on all files, not just apps, in my Hazel rules, is because when unzipping a downloaded file or folder, generally the “Date Modified” of the contents is set to the original date of the file when it was added to the .zip archive, not the date you unzipped it. Since I view my Downloads folder in reverse chronological order, this prevents me from unzipping a file and losing the resulting extracted contents in an arbitrary place in the middle of a list.
(Incidentally, it turns out that it is not possible to set the date added attribute of a file in Hazel, via Appleacript, a Unix command, or any other way besides hacking the Spotlight database in scary semi-documented ways. Absent that, only actually adding a file to a folder will do it. I have confirmed this with Hazel tech support. )
My applications rule is somewhat different. I do label all new files Green. But it’s a fairly frequent occurrence for me to drag applications out of Downloads and into /Applications or /Applications/Utilities, so I have a rule to remove all labels from files landing in those two folders.
Hope this is helpful!
Nice one! I’ve always found annoying the difference in dates between the zip file and its contents. Thanks for the tip.
I added a quick te snippet to work with Merlin’s workflow. It will help out those not yet using 1password and keep the workflow pretty simple for those of us using te.
http://thebrianhayes.com/blog/kung-fu-grippe-the-imperfect-art-of-sending-sensitive-stuff
Nice EP. I picked Hazel 3.0 (family pack) after I listened to the show (after a two-day trial).
The software is amazing. I can now processes files like I always wanted to do. Thanks!
Keep up the good work!
Eric (Nantes, France)
Any Promo codes this time?
Great podcast! Thanks for your hard work!
Another great show guys!
One place I have used Hazel recently is to create a Dropbox file of mail attachments I have received – I use Hazel to remove the attachments (like e-mail footers) I don’t want, and to rename and files the attachments. May or may not be of interest. Blog post below with details:
http://www.halfadozenmonkeys.com/imported-20120317214505/2012/4/10/dealing-with-e-mail-attachments-on-mobile-devices.html
Rich
Can anyone recommend software like ScanSnap’s that can be used with existing flatbed scanners?
My three favourite Hazel rules:
## Print to receits:
I have an automator print-service “print to receipts”, that I use whenenever I buy something on the web and get a reciept. The automator service prints as a pdf, let’s my rename the file, let’s me put it in a receipts folder watched by hazel, and hazel subsorts it into folders named with the pattern YYYY-MM. Very for those pesky mails from software vendor, that I have to give to my bookkeeper.
## Empty temp folder
Simple stuff but practical. I use Default folder X (great app) to have keyboard shortcut access to my favourite folders. On Ctrl-3 I have my TEMP folder. This is essentially a short term storage space that get’s cleaned automatically. Any files in TEMP older than 3 days get nuked by hazel.
## Trash old omnifcous backups
What a harddrive saver!
Hazel is a great program but can anyone comment on what might happen in the future? Sandboxing and Mountain Lion will have an effect on what is allowed.
Does anyone know if there is a way to create an Omnifocus task via Applescript? I would like to create a task for manual intervention for some of my Hazel rules.
Thanks,
Mark
I think these are the types of things you were looking for:
http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/omnifocus-text-list-from-dropbox/
http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/omnifocus-text-list-from-dropbox/
David,
I believe it was on this show that you mentioned a folder action regarding PDFpen that allows you to drop a file into the folder and the action will happen. If you can post how this works, or something similar (perhaps using keyboard maestro?), it would be a huge help to me!
I think these are the types of things you were looking for:
http://macsparky.com/2012/8/applescript-omnifocus-tasks