Backing up a smart folder / saved search

If I attempt to back up the contents of a Finder-created saved search (smart folder), the search document itself is backed up, but its contents are not.

Is this expected behavior? I?d find it much more useful to be able to back up the files listed within the folder.

Erik,

QRecall works at the filesystem level. So-called "smart" folders are an abstraction created by the Finder. The Finder stores the metadata needed to find and display the contents of its "smart" folder in a file, and that's what QRecall captures.

Unfortunately, QRecall cannot look into the mind of the Finder to find out what those files are, anymore than it could look into iTunes to capture the audio files in a playlist.

I've considered adding the ability to capture items based on some search criteria, but there are so many problems with this idea I just keep putting it off.

OK, that makes sense.

FYI, my use case for this was for capturing only only recently created or modified files: for this particular situation, I want a small and lean archive and have no need to capture even one copy of ?old stuff.? As you have guessed, using a smart folder was a workaround for QRecall not having a way to capture based on such criteria.

For now, perhaps I?ll just have Hazel make Finder-level copies ? unless you have a better suggestion?

Actually, that's a pretty good solution, espeically if you're using APFS.

By default, copying a file in APFS makes a clone of that file; essentially a "snapshot" of the file that doesn't use any additional storage (until one of the files is modified). So copying your found files into a folder, capturing that folder, and then deleting those files should be remarkably fast and efficient.

Pro tip: I can see at least two ways of automating this.

(1) The first would be to automate your copy routine to copy your recent files into a fixed folder, then set up a QRecall action to capture that folder whenever it changes. As soon as your copy is done, the capture action will take off.

(2) Same capture action, but run on a schedule. Then add a prolog script that performs the find and copy before the capture runs.