![]() ![]() If you’re interested in learning more about Automator, you should check out Rounik’s Video Tutorial or, if you prefer reading up on the subject, any of the books by Ben Waldie will be a fantastic help to you. No programing knowledge is required! On Lion or Snow Leopard systems, Automator can then turn your workflows into “Services” or, as Apple describes them, streamlined shortcuts which “let you use features of one application while working in another”. It enables you to create and specify workflows out of pre-made “Actions”. In case you’ve never heard of it before, Automator is a program included with every Mac which is designed to automate repetitive tasks. If you’re interested in reading his complete blog post on the subject, please check it out at the excellent MacProVideo blog. Rather than “re-invent the wheel”, I have excerpted and adapted his walk-through below (thanks to the kind permission of Rounik and the people at MacProVideo). I was going to write a detailed walk-through about how to set it up when I realized that reader and MacProVideo Guru Rounik Sethi had already done an excellent one! If you’re running a Snow Leopard or Lion-based system, another option is to use the Mac OS’s Services to run AppleScripts from a keyboard shortcut.Ĭompared to using FastScripts, it’s definitely a more involved process to get that going. Thanks to FastScripts, my “Send to Evernote Shortcut” (for me, ⌘ E (as in Evernote)) can be the same in every application, even though they each run different scripts to send their data into Evernote! For example, I am putting all sorts of stuff into Evernote from any number of programs throughout the day, and I’ve got several different AppleScripts on my system to that move that data into Evernote pretty seamlessly. Here’s something else FastScripts is great at - context-sensitive shortcuts. FastScripts helps you see what you’ve got on your Mac, run or edit your scripts, and - for the ones you use regularly - assign a keyboard shortcut to run them even quicker. In fact, many times people don’t realize that there are AppleScripts already installed on their Macs for many programs. Just click on the FastScripts icon and you are able to quickly assign keyboard shortcuts to all of your AppleScripts and also browse through your script collection for any given application. The Menulet Makes It Easy To See And Use Your AppleScriptsįastScripts is an application by Red Sweater Software that lets you manage your AppleScripts - and also the keyboard shortcuts that run them - from a menulet (a.k.a., one of those little icons in the menu bar near the clock). So let’s take another pass at this and walk through two ways you can set up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript.įastScripts by Red Sweater (a.k.a., “What I Use”) But for the scripts you want to use repeatedly throughout the day, keyboard shortcuts aren’t just desirable - they’re essential! For a “utility script” that you only use occasionally, it’s no problem to manually run it. When people understand how they can use both scripts and shortcuts together - invoking complex actions with the same ease as cutting-and-pasting inside a document - they tend to become really enthusiastic about using them. In the same way, AppleScripts are designed to speed up the way you use your Mac. Proper use of keyboard shortcuts can have a massively positive impact on making your computer a lot easier to use! Looking at it with fresh eyes, I realized that I could do better… and that it was important to do so. She wasn’t a new Mac user by any stretch - in fact, she’s a tech professional! So I went back and re-read my own previous descriptions of how to assign a keyboard shortcut to a script. It’s filled with links to books, videos, tools, and websites that’ll help you get started!Ī reader sent me a message because she was having a hard time setting up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript. If you’re interested in learning more about AppleScript, be sure to check out the AppleScript and Automator Resources Page.
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