Posts Tagged
AppleScript
This is the first post in a new series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite posts from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on July 7, 2009.
AppleScript is a powerful scripting language that comes built-in to OS X. The principal use for AppleScript is the automation of tasks that are normally repetitious and time consuming. For instance, as a freelancer, I hate creating invoices every week for my various clients. To solve this problem I wrote an AppleScript that reads the hours that I log into iCal, creates an invoice in Microsoft Excel based on those hours, and emails the invoices to my clients. All with the click of a button!
The best part about AppleScript is that you don’t have to be a genius programmer to use it. In fact, you don’t have to have any programming experience whatsoever. This article will show you how to write an AppleScript for nearly any application using the simple instructions that come hidden within each app’s framework. Intrigued? Read on!
AppleScript is an incredibly natural and intuitive scripting language that helps you automate tasks in OS X. I’m quite fond of the syntax and how easy it is to learn and write, but there are definitely some areas that are harder to pick up than others. For instance, I always have difficulty remembering all of the options and specific syntax involved in creating dialog windows such as those that allow the user to input some text or make a selection from a number of options.
Today we’re going to take a quick look at how you can streamline this process with an incredibly handy tool from the Mac App Store called Dialog Maker.
It’s been quite a while since we’ve had any fun with AppleScript so today we’re going to build a super basic script that automatically reads a list of URLs and turns them into screenshots.
If you’re new to AppleScript, be sure to read our introduction and advanced articles! We’ll be explaining things as we go but everything will make a lot more sense once you do your homework.
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Many people would agree that iTunes is fast becoming (or has already become) bloatware. It has a ridiculous number of features and uses, but not always what we’d consider to be the right ones. You can find out what songs Bruno Mars is particularly enjoying at this time, and yet can’t search YouTube for music videos.
Luckily, everybody’s in the same boat, and people have been working tirelessly to create ways for you to make your iTunes work the way you want it to. Today, we’ll be focusing on DougScripts, a site started by Doug Adams a little over 10 years ago in February 2001, which is home to around 500 AppleScript files.
These scripts are free to download and easy to install. In this article, we’ll be showing you how to do just that, and showcasing some of Doug’s best work over the past 10 years.
Automator is a handy utility built into Mac OS X that allows us to automate tasks. Many new Mac OS users are unware it exists, and if they do know about it, they are unsure about how useful it can be.
This post aims to give you a quick look into the potential of Automator by creating some very simple and actually quite handy workflow applications of your own. Many of these applications will take a matter of seconds for you to create, but could save you much more time in the long run.
Automator is certainly worth spending some time getting know. I hope creating these basic automations will give you a view at the potential for some much more complicated and incredible time saving automations that can be created.
Let’s dive right in!
Apptivate is an incredibly useful little app that lives in your menubar and allows you to set keyboard shortcuts to launch applications and scripts.
Today we’ll look at where to get Apptivate and how to set it up. As a bonus, I’ll show you how to create your very own window management application similar to SizeUp using a combination of AppleScript and Apptivate.
AppleScript is an easily approachable scripting language built into OS X. However, as with any programming language, performing complex tasks with AppleScript can be difficult and requires thorough knowledge of advanced programming techniques.
We’ve previously offered a basic introduction to AppleScript, and this article will cover a number of useful AppleScript tips and tricks to help you create some amazing advanced scripts.
Automator is an incredibly handy automation assistant for OS X. Instead of writing lines of code as in AppleScript, Automator allows you to string together preset actions through an easy to use drag-and-drop interface. The result is no-brainer automation on the fly.
This tutorial will cover a number of basic Automator features including how to work with application-specific actions, creating variables, embedding AppleScripts, and recording custom actions. Let’s get going!
