Launch Finder and Create a Contextual Workflow

The following command will do the trick nicely. I have to say I'm surprised so many people have been saying Automator hasn't received much attention. It received some huge upgrades with Snow Leopard giving it new features.

In this hands-on tutorial, Ars will show you how to use Automator to build …

These were featured prominently in Apple's Snow Leopard pages. Automator got with There was a new control panel to let you quickly turn on or off Services. In addition to Services in Automator you could create print plugins those options in the print menu and a lot else. They also added quite a few new Automator actions. Now when it comes to Applescript proper, I'll agree with you. It hasn't had a lot of love from Apple for a while. But it was IMO inferior to Appscript and has quite a few limitations. Apple's own apps especially Mail and Numbers aren't nearly as scriptable as they should be.

I attribute at least some of this to allocating resources to iOS. Lion doesn't appear to offer much with respect to Applescript or Automator that I can see. Unlike Snow Leopard.

I've used Services to do things like convert png screenshots to jpegs with a right click, amongst other things. Very, very handy. But don't stop with Automator. Applescript supports terminal commands as well, as well as QuicKeys. QuicKeys has been in the toolbox of many Mac power users since the 90s. It can contain Applescripts in it's actions, and it can directly issue terminal commands to OS X as well. Giving you push-button access to those commands, no matter how complex.

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It is another memory eater for sure, but worth it if you ask me. I use it to do lots of things. Past text into fields, control Photoshop, log my hours into Peoplesoft, etc. But Applescript is the crown jewels of Mac automation.


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And there's two books that will get you deep into it quickly. Sal Soghoian's book "Applescript " is a bargain considering how it gets you up to speed in record time.

What You Need

Sal is the guy in charge of Applescript at Apple. And then follow that with Matt Neuberg's book "Applescript The Definitive Guide" which is the top reference for everything Applescript outside of Apple's own documentation. Add to that a phenomenal script editor, Script Debugger by Latenight software very expensive, but worth every penny which lets you see inside applications as they are running and give you references to objects in those applications to address with your scripts, and you have a killer combination for automation that can't be beat.

I've used Script Debugger to automate Applescript to control Extensis Portfolio, Filemaker Pro, Photoshop and other applications, to make me vastly more productive as a photo editor for an international non-profit research and educational institution where three photo editors used to do the job.

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Hope this doesn't sound like spam. But I wanted to welcome you to the world of OS X automation and point out some directions you might want to go. I'd second the value of Quickeys. I'd used it way back in the Sys7 days but hadn't used it with OSX due to its high price.

How to create simple Mac apps from shell scripts · Mathias Bynens

The price has come down and the UI is greatly improved. I'd been using iKey for the past few years but switched last week and am pretty glad I did. But Automator is slow - it's one big downside. A macro program like Quickeys or FastScripts can really speed this up. Quickeys is probably the nicest simply because it does so much more.

But if you just want to assign keys then iKey or Fastscripts is the way to go. To add to the above comments one very nice thing you can do with Applescript is GUI scripting - i. Unfortunately this is a bit of a black art for anything complex.

Apple has an application GUI Inspector to list the names of objects. But it's a pain to use and a third party app like UI Browser is better, albeit hard to justify for casual scripting. Ryan, I'm curious if you have any recommendations for a good AppleScript book? I wanted to learn the language a few years ago, but at the time the available books were severely dated.

I've made a shit-ton of these and glad to see they're getting coverage. This shit is magic and when OnMyCommand was broken by Nice article and great comments. Wow, it's amazing how much the common perceptions about automation in Mac OS X differ from reality! Mac OS X AppleScript apps now have direct access to the Cocoa frameworks and their UI can use standard outlets, actions, and bindings!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't see any reason why that would change in Lion. When AppleScript was first introduced during the System 7. At the time I believed both of these problems were related The AppleEvent object model required extensive decoding and often a redesign of the entire application "factoring" as they called it , and even Apple's own tools didn't bake-in support. And with a true OO messaging system, the overhead would be greatly reduced.

And it rocked. When enabled, the script will run on any file that is added to that folder. You can flip photos horizontally or vertically, duplicate them as JPEG or PNG, rotate them, or prompt an alert when a new item is added. Then drag a file on top of the folder to see your AppleScript run. Play around with the Scripts menu bar to get a sense of what else AppleScript can do for you. AppleScript uses a human-readable syntax. This will give an idea of the most fundamental statement in AppleScript: the tell statement. Also note: the line that says --get the name of the folder is actually just a comment, telling the user what the script is doing at that moment.

Comments are essential—not just for telling other people what your script did, but for reminding yourself. If you have some programming experience and are familiar with concepts like variables, do-while loops , and conditionals, you can get a lot out of AppleScript beyond the scope of this introduction. With this simple syntax down, you can tell nearly any Mac app to do pretty much anything. From there, you can see all the available AppleScript commands. If programming gives you a headache, there are simpler ways to automate your tasks.

Automator uses a friendly GUI and a simple interface to turn mind-numbing routines into one-click set-and-forget tasks. While Automator is not as customizable or intricate as AppleScript, it is simpler and much harder to break. Here are awesome time-saving workflows you should set up. Your email address will not be published. Hi Tim, Well I have gone through the term Scripting Language many times , can you answer when a programming language said to be scripting language i. I as well have Perhaps this is no longer offered in Snow Leopard?