I prefer to refresh my iTunes podcasts at times I control, so usually I right-click on the one I want to refresh, and choose Refresh Podcast. But sometimes I mistakenly select another menu item, and that's a real PITA. So I'd like to have an applescript which will only refresh a single podcast. I plan to hard-code the podcast into the script -- there's only one that I do near-daily, and the others can be done as and when I feel like it, with right-click. If I mess them up it's less of a PITA than with the main one.
The iTunes dictionary has updatePodcast and updateAllPodcasts -- clearly the former is the one I need to use (I don't want to have them all updated every time). But I can't figure out how to specify the podcast! The dictionary doesn't have a podcast class or anything similar, and item offers no obvious guidance either.
I've tried:
tell application "iTunes"
updatePodcast NameOfPodcast
end tell
Where NameOfPodcast is replaced by the exact string (AFAIK) that is in the iTunes podcast listing. Applescript tells me:
error "iTunes got an error: NameOfPodcast doesn’t understand the “updatePodcast” message." number -1708 from NameOfPodcast
Does anyone know how to get iTunes to refresh a single podcast from within applescript?
Edit:
Thanks to #user3439894 and #wp78de but referring to a track doesn't work. AS complains that the track doesn't understand the updatePodcast message. If I try to get a list of albums instead (every album of playlist "Podcasts" whose name is album_name), I get told that album is a property whereas it wants a class name.
Try it like this:
tell application "iTunes"
set allTracks to every track of playlist "Podcasts" whose album is "podcast_name"
repeat with singleTrack in allTracks
updatePodcast singleTrack
end repeat
end tell
Or try
tell application "iTunes"
updatePodcast (first track of playlist "Podcasts" whose album is "XY Podcast")
end tell
Related
I have an issue with my music library.
Some songs I am unable to play because they cannot be found locally.
Here's an example of the error messages I get when playing a specific song:
The song ... could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?
I can simply press Cancel and the song will be matched via the Apple Music Service.
This allows me to then play the song.
This issue has been discussed here, albeit not in an automated way. Hence, I would like to find an automated solution.
For this, I took the approach of looping through my library by playing each song.
By default, if a song cannot be found, the script automatically skips to the next song.
However, I would like the script to deal with the "file not found" errors and press Cancel.
My current attempt unfortunately does not work:
-- Play first song in library (turn off shuffle and repeat)
set i to 4000 --number of songs in library
repeat while i > 0
tell application "Music" to play (next track)
tell application "System Events"
key code 53
end tell
set i to i - 1
end repeat
How can I force the script to deal with these pop-up errors?
Note: I am also open to any other, more efficient solution to my problem if you have any suggestions. I decided not to go for the Locate option because it takes more time and I will delete any unreferenced songs from my disk at a later stage anyways.
UPDATED VERSION. Following script doesn't play tracks and programatically clicks button "Cancel" when track is corrupted. Like described by OP fixing tracks manually workflow:
tell application "Music"
activate -- required
tell source "Library"
repeat with nextTrack in tracks
try
with timeout of 2 seconds
set theResult to play (contents of nextTrack)
end timeout
theResult
on error
delay 1
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Music" to tell window 1 to if UI element "Cancel" exists then click UI element "Cancel"
end try
stop
end repeat
end tell
end tell
I've been using an AppleScript to export photos in a Smart Album in Apple Photos for a while now. After upgrading to Catalina, it seems that my query for all albums no longer returns Smart Albums.
Specifically, I have a line that loads all albums like this:
tell Application Photos
set theseAlbums to every album
...
end tell
Previously, theseAlbums would contain regular and smart albums. After upgrading to Catalina, they only contain the regular (non-smart) ones.
Is there anything I can do to query for smart albums? I looked at the Photos Dictionary and didn't see anything. I also tried changing every album to every container with no luck.
Here's the code in context - a helper function that finds an album by name:
on getAlbumNamed(thisName)
tell application "Photos"
set theseAlbums to every album
repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseAlbums
set thisAlbum to item i of theseAlbums
if the name of thisAlbum is thisName then
return thisAlbum
end if
end repeat
end tell
end getAlbumNamed
Thanks in advance for any help.
The following script will open a track in iTunes
use application "iTunes"
property trackURL : "itmss://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brahms-violin-concerto-in-d-major-op-77-iii-allegro/145533236?i=145533044&uo=4"
open location trackURL
Now, asking "iTunes" to play it does not work because the track is highlighted but not properly selected, i.e., it requires a manual mouse click to select it and play it.
How can I select the highlighted track? Or how could I ask "iTunes" to play the song?! Alternatively, is there a way to add a music to my library from an URL directly?
Disclaimer: I don't have the Apple Music subscription, so the UI on my end may not be exactly the same as yours. However, if I click the "Play" button, I get the little advertisement asking me to sign up for the service, which I assume would just play the music if you had the service. So, these are the steps I've been able to follow to get that box to pop up:
The first, and most convenient from AppleScript, thing to try is just to hit the space bar to start the music playing. This actually works great if I've selected the item manually by clicking on it. However, after open location, it doesn't work, and this appears to be because even though the row is highlighted in the viewer, the actual keyboard focus seems to be on the page itself (the iTunes Store and Apple Music appear to have their entire UI presented as web pages rendered by WebKit). You can verify this by tapping the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard; the page scrolls up and down instead of you switching to adjacent tracks.
My opinion is that this is actually a bug in iTunes; I'd consider the true solution to the problem to be to report this to Apple via the bug reporter. Using open location really should set the keyboard focus to the track you navigated to.
With that said, we can work around it in the short term by simulating a click on the "Play" button. Note that you'll probably need to add your app in System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Accessibility. Note also that this is incredibly fragile, and if Apple ever changes anything in the layout of the web pages they're serving, this whole thing will break. Finally, please note that this code is extremely ugly; the whole thing gives me hives just by looking at it, but it's the only thing I was able to get to work. Side effects of reading this code may include nausea, headaches, and suicidal thoughts. Do not read this code immediately after eating. Consult your doctor before reading this code if you have a history of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
property trackURL : "itmss://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brahms-violin-concerto-in-d-major-op-77-iii-allegro/145533236?i=145533044&uo=4"
property trackTitle : "III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace"
tell application "iTunes"
activate
open location trackURL
delay 1 -- give the page a second to load
end tell
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iTunes"
set theRows to the rows of table 1 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of group 1 of front window
-- "repeat with eachRow in theRows" isn't working. I don't know why. Freaking AppleScript
repeat with i from 1 to the number of theRows
set eachRow to item i of theRows
if exists group 2 of UI element 2 of eachRow then
if value of static text 1 of group 1 of group 2 of UI element 2 of eachRow is trackTitle then
tell group 1 of UI element 2 of eachRow to click
end if
end if
end repeat
end tell
end tell
If Apple ever fixes the bug, of course, we should be able to just:
tell application "iTunes"
activate
open location trackURL
delay 1 -- give the page a second to load
end tell
tell application "System Events" to keystroke space
I am using iTunes to convert a large .aif file to a much smaller .mp3 file. The filename changes each day because I am adding the date to the name. So, a file named "abcxyz 2-2-2014" gets converted in iTunes. After the conversion, I want to delete it from iTunes. I'm trying to use Applescript to search for the file and delete it. I'm trying this:
on deleteTrack(trackName)
tell application "iTunes"
set theTrack to track named trackName of playlist "Library"
set songFile to location of theTrack
delete theTrack
end tell
tell application "Finder" to delete songFile
end deleteTrack
on run
tell application "iTunes"
set result to (file tracks whose name contains "abcxyz")
repeat with t in result
deleteTrack(name of t as string)
end repeat
end tell
end run
I found the deleteTrack routine which works perfectly if you pass it a string like this:
on run
deleteTrack("abcxyz 2-2-2014")
end run
But that requires that I know the exact name of the track, which I don't. The error that I get is "Can't continue deleteTrack" ..with the deleteTrack(name of t as string) line selected in Applescript Editor.
Thanks for any help.
You should re-read the material about AppleScript's handlers. Because your handler call is inside of a tell application "iTunes" block, AppleScript is looking in iTunes for deleteTrack. Try this instead:
my deleteTrack(name of t as string)
I am trying to write an iTunes script that takes the selected tracks, moves the files to a different folder on my hard drive, and then update their location in iTunes.
The overall flow will be something like this:
Get selection
Determine path to selection
Move items to destination
Update referenced path in iTunes
I used the suggestion from this question to get the path of a selection in iTunes, and I will be able to figure out how to move the files to where I want them, however, now I want to tell iTunes that the file path is actually some place else.
Anybody know how to go about this?
I figured it out. I had a different error that was making me think this is harder then it is. Here's how I got it to work:
tell application "iTunes"
set s to selection
repeat with c in s
if video kind of c is TV show then
set location of c to <destination directory>
<code to move file>
end if
end tell
The basic idea is to set the location property of each file track item to its new file path. For example:
tell application "iTunes"
tell its first browser window
set currentTrack to first item of (get its selection)
set location of currentTrack to POSIX file "/Users/nad/Music/movedfile.m4a"
end tell
end tell