Hazel Rules Examples

Hazel is a macOS folder-automation utility, and "Hazel rules examples" refers to the library of sample recipes people share to show what a rule can do. A rule has two halves: conditions that decide whether a file matches, and actions that decide what happens to it. A typical example might read "if the extension is pdf and the name contains invoice, move to Documents/Invoices and rename with the date," or "if the file was added more than 30 days ago and is still in Downloads, move it to an archive folder." Because rules are stored per folder, most setups end up as a stack of rules attached to Downloads, Desktop, and a scanner output folder.

These examples matter because they encode the organizational logic most people carry in their heads. Downloads folders accumulate installers, receipts, screenshots, contracts, and half-finished drafts, and the sorting decisions are usually obvious to a human but tedious to perform by hand. Writing them down as rules turns a recurring chore into something the computer handles in the background.

Studying rule examples is also a good way to learn the vocabulary of file automation generally: match conditions, boolean grouping, pattern tokens for renaming, nested subfolder rules, and ordering. Those concepts carry over to other approaches, including AI-driven tools like Sortio, where the same intent is expressed as a written instruction rather than a set of dropdown menus. Understanding what a rule is trying to accomplish makes it far easier to describe that outcome in any system you choose.

Rule-based automation works on a watch-and-evaluate loop. The utility monitors a folder for changes, and when a file appears or is modified, it walks the folder's rule list from top to bottom. The first rule whose conditions all match fires its actions; depending on the configuration, evaluation may stop there or continue down the list. Conditions can inspect the filename, extension, kind, size, creation or modification date, source URL, Finder tag, or Spotlight comment, and some setups can look inside a document's text to match on its contents. Actions then move, copy, rename, tag, sort into a subfolder, run a shell script, or send the file to the trash. Rename actions typically use tokens — a date component, a matched substring, a counter — assembled into a filename pattern.

The practical consequence is that every organizational decision has to be anticipated in advance and expressed as an explicit condition. That works well for high-volume, predictable files: bank statements from one issuer, camera exports, or invoices that always share a naming convention. It works less well for the long tail, where filenames are inconsistent and a single rule can't capture the intent.

Sortio approaches the same problem from the other direction. Instead of building conditions, you write what you want in plain language — for example, "put tax documents from this year into a Taxes folder and group the rest by project" — and Sortio proposes an organization plan you can review before anything moves. You choose whether it sorts by filename and metadata alone or reads file contents, and optional renaming can apply a consistent naming convention at the same time. Content analysis only occurs when you explicitly enable the content sorting toggle. Sortio backs up files before making changes, so a sort can be reverted if the result isn't what you expected.