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Posts tagged with "applescript"

Alfred for Mac Adds Sync, Launches AppleScripts with Keyboard Shortcuts

We’re huge fans of Alfred here at MacStories. The minimal launcher for Mac that was released as an alternative to Launchbar and Spotlight quickly evolved into a full-featured solution to browse files, play music from iTunes, manage your system clipboard and check on dictionary definitions. Alfred hasn’t officially reached the 1.0 status, yet the developers iterated so fast in the past months that Alfred has turned into a powerful application launcher packed with functionalities aimed at getting things done using only the keyboard. Looking back at previous Alfred releases, it’s amazing to see how the app went from being a simple way to launch apps to a tool tailored to both casual and power users, thanks to the possibility of creating custom searches, shortening links, browsing the filesystem, and more. The latest stable release of Alfred, 0.9, adds a number of improvements that greatly enhance the feature set of the app.

Alfred 0.9 can now launch any AppleScript on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut. Similarly to how the excellent FastScripts enables you to assign commands to scripts saved locally, the new Global Hotkeys section in the app’s preferences lets you assign a shortcut to a specific script, and run it when Alfred is open without seeing Alfred’s actual window. Just hit the shortcut anywhere on your Mac, and the script will execute. This is true for AppleScripts, files, and apps; being able to run AppleScripts through the app you’re already using for many other things is a very welcome addition, but it’s exclusive to those who bought the Powerpack, which is highly recommended if you want to get the most out of Alfred.

Version 0.9 also comes with Dropbox and iDisk sync, meaning you’ll finally be able to keep Alfred’s settings in sync between different Macs. The app can sync themes, snippets, scripts and custom sites. Alongside iTunes Mini Player improvements, a redesigned Preferences window and several performance enhancements, Alfred 0.9 also introduces new Terminal functionalities: you can run your Terminal commands “silently behind the scenes”, as well as add your own icons to make Terminal commands look like native Alfred actions.

Overall, it’s undeniable Alfred keeps getting better on each release. We don’t know what’s coming in the final 1.0 version, but if previous updates are of any indication I guess the developers are working on something big for the major 1.0 milestone. In the meantime, you can get Alfred here for free, and buy the Powerpack for £12 ($20). Check out more screenshots and the full 0.9 changelog below. Read more

Fast Switching Between Multiple iTunes Accounts→

Fast Switching Between Multiple iTunes Accounts

Redditor TinyLebowski shares an AppleScript that, once configured and run, will allow you to switch to another iTunes account in 2 seconds, without typing anything. This is particularly useful for people like me who own several iTunes accounts (especially for App Store and iTunes movie releases) and think iTunes should have an option to “fast switch” between accounts – even on different international Stores. This AppleScript works as advertised and, if you are switching to an international store, you’ll just have to hit the Ok button. If the Store is the same, you won’t have to hit anything and the login process will be automatic.

Beware, though: your Apple ID and password are stored in plain text inside the script. Of course this is meant to be saved on your local machine, assuming only you have access to that. However, saving the script as an “application” bundle might provide an additional security measure (that is, someone will have to “show package contents” and navigate through folders to see the main script).

I love it. Check out the full AppleScript here.

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Delegate OmniFocus Tasks with Sparrow→

Delegate OmniFocus Tasks with Sparrow

Don Southard created an AppleScript that sends tasks from OmniFocus to Sparrow:

Sparrow updated a few hours ago and brought with it basic support for AppleScript. I wanted to test it out and see what they included so I whipped this very basic script to delegate a task in OmniFocus by sending an email with details about the task using Sparrow.

Very nice. How long until someone figures out a solution for the other way around? Because I would love to export Sparrow emails as OmniFocus tasks.

Update: Ben Brooks shares an updated version of the AppleScript that works with Mail.app and also embeds a link to the OmniFocus task in the message.

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Toggle Any Twitter Client On Your Mac

Toggle Twitter is a simple and useful script created by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software which can toggle and make visible most any Twitter client for OS X. Well, at least it comes with built-in support for the most popular ones. The concept behind the script goes like this: we try a lot of Twitter clients every week, or month. Many of us even use multiple clients throughout the day. The problem is, not every client has support for a general hotkey to toggle the visibility of the app.

So if you’re using Twitterrific or Twitter for Mac and you assigned the same keyboard shortcut to both the apps to show them when active, you’d be disappointed to find that other Twitter clients don’t allow you to assign a hotkey. This script comes with a list of popular Twitter apps, but you can add your favorite ones manually with a bit of AppleScript Editor. The ones supported “out of the box” are:  Twitter, Tweetie, Kiwi, Ostrich, Twitterrific, Hibari and YoruFukurou. Read more

Top 5 OmniFocus Applescripts→

Top 5 OmniFocus Applescripts

The OmniFocus Extras forum on the Omnigroup user forum is one of the great sources for ready-to-use Applescripts. All you need to do is move them into the right directory on your machine and occasionally modify some of the scripts parameters to fit your needs.

The following AppleScript are those which are extremely handy and I use on a daily basis. There are many others available on the forum and other places, but many of them didn’t really add much value to my workflow, which is a pretty standard one, or solve problems I never encountered.

The “find project” one is a must-have.

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Ten Great Applescripts For iTunes 10→

Ten Great Applescripts For iTunes 10

But iTunes is one of Apple’s most flexible applications, offering a huge library of AppleScript commands and properties. AppleScript virtuoso Doug Adams has been running the Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes Website for years, collecting scripts that he and others have written, and providing them for free. Here are some of the best AppleScripts that I’ve found on Doug’s site.

Great tips and great list. The Embed Artwork one is exactly what I was looking for. Make sure to visit Doug’s website for more AppleScripts.

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Tip: Automatically Add URL To A Downloaded File As Spotlight Comment

Also from Reddit, a nice little hack that allows you to automatically add a downloaded file’s URL as a Spotlight comment to the file itself. Spotlight comments are useful because they add metadata to a file, and they are supported across many 3rd party applications such as DEVONthink, Leap and Launchbar.

Spotlight comments are searchable, and having a URL automatically attached to a downloaded file can come in handy when you remember the website you downloaded something from, but you can’t find the file. Read more