Use Date Added when working with Downloads

I was playing around tonight with some stuff and happened to have PathFinder open while I was downloading a fairly large file. I noticed that while the file was coming down, it showed up in the Downloads folder, but the Date Added field was blank.

What I'm suggesting as a tip is that if you want to start processing a file only after it is completely downloaded,* set the first condition to be (Date Added)<is not blank>. I'll do a post on my blog with pictures and stuff, but I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

* This also works with files that are being encoded/decoded. I ran a file through ffmpeg and it didn't fill in the Date Added field until the process was complete.

Phaedra Deepsky
veganswithtypewriters.com

I'm not sure if this works with Hazel's built-in "Date Added". That will get set the first time Hazel sees the file. It may work if you use Spotlight's version of it. Select "Other..." and select the "Date Added" in that list.

I'll have to investigate but if date added (the OS's version) is truly only added after the file is finished, I'll have to look into adding such a check so that Hazel won't process the file anyways (as it does with certain other "busy" files). Thanks for the tip.