Posts Tagged
automation
I recently stumbled upon a great iPad app that, as strange as it may sound, has changed the way I work with my Mac. You can read our full review of Actions on iPad.AppStorm, but in a nutshell, Actions is an app that allows you to trigger keyboard shortcuts from your iPad.
Now while this may not seem very useful or relevant, think of the amount of keyboard shortcuts apps such as Photoshop have. Now imagine being able to launch these from your iPad, visually organised in a way that makes sense to you. Or imagine harnessing the power of Automator, Keyboard Maestro or Alfred with the aid of your iPad.
Seem more appealing? Then read on for a few interesting use cases of Actions for iPad with your Mac. Since it can launch keyboard shortcuts at the tap of one finger, you can make keyboard shortcuts that’d be rather unwieldily to enter on a Mac’s keyboard, and then use them in Actions easily. And even if you don’t have an iPad or don’t want to get Actions, you’ll likely find some shortcut based tricks here that’ll speed up work on your Mac.
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Computers should be so smart today, and yet, it feels like we have to babysit them, performing menial tasks, instead of putting the computer’s own power to work. We’re blown away by voice command apps like Siri, and yet our MacBooks that are far faster take more effort to use. There should be a way to automate it more.
ControlPlane is an open-source context-sensitive automation application. In short, what this means is actions can be triggered based on where you are, what you’re doing or when you’re doing it. There’s a vast number of ways you could put it to use, and it’s limited only by your imagination. So if your curiosity is already piqued, read on while I take you on a small tour.
Mac OS X offers users a fair amount of options to streamline our everyday workflows. You can have your computer set to turn on and off automatically based on the time and day of the week. You can use Automator to perform a series of repetitive steps, and anyone with a basic programming background can use AppleScript to their advantage.
If you find yourself logging in and out of your system frequently, then taking the time to set your login items can save you the hassle of constantly having to re-open your most frequently used apps. Startupizer from Gentle Bytes improves Mac’s login item preferences by adding a few neat features.
These days we all have our many ways of sharing content online, be it email, Dropbox, or any number of other services, and it can be hard to keep them all straight. The developers of Dropzone have tried to simplify and streamline the sharing process (and other tasks) through automation and a single interface. Let’s see if they’ve succeeded!
This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on August 6th, 2011.
Automation is one of my favorite topics. There’s something about sitting back and watching my Mac perform tasks for me that makes me smile every time.
Today we’re going to take a look at Task Till Dawn, a simple and free little automation tool that will allow you to schedule files and applications to launch automatically.
