It's possible to run multiple instances or copies of the same app on a Mac. But AppleScript can't seem to identify them separately. Say my app is "FileMaker Pro" and I have multiple copies of it running. Having AppleScript tell "FileMaker Pro" to quit, I believe quits the first one that ran, which might not be the one I want it to quit.
I want to write a script that first will identify the frontmost application, then go off and do some other stuff (which might bring other apps to the front) then SAFELY quit the original frontmost application that it identified at the start.
Some googling I've done has found suggestions where I identify the the frontmost application by process id and then
do shell script "kill ..."
but from what I can tell "kill" doesn't ask to save changes, etc. (so it doesn't SAFELY quit").
I want this script to do exactly what the AppleScript quit command or manually choosing quit from the file menu would do, including ask to save changes or whatever else.
Is this possible? If so how?
For a copy of an application: it's possible by using the path of the application instead of the name.
tell application "System Events"
tell (first application process whose frontmost is true)
set x to its application file -- get the path of this application (the result is an alias of "System Events")
end tell
set thisAppPath to path of x -- get the path (a string)
end tell
--- *** go off and do some other stuff ****
---
--- SAFELY quit the original frontmost application that it identified at the start.
tell application thisAppPath -- the path must be a string
try -- *** use 0 to no limit ***
with timeout of 240 seconds -- a time limit is given to the user to save changes, etc.
quit
end timeout
on error -- (timeout error): the user do nothing because the application is still open
-- do something
end try
end tell
--
-- script after the application quits
--
I'm working on a script for Photoshop and was using application id "com.adobe.photoshop" to identify when Photoshop is open. Unfortunately this ONLY seems to work for whatever the default version is. I have several machines this needs to go on and they might have 3 or they might have 5 versions.
I'd like it to work with whatever version is currently open.
The only way I can think to do that is to have an initial check of
if application "Photoshop CS6" is running
set Appname to "Photoshop CS6
ect... ect... ect...
for each version, but that's messy and if the version doesn't exist it generates a popup asking for where that is located.
Any ideas? =/
if you are sure that Photoshop is already launched at the time you are running your script, you can do the check by looking to all running processes as bellow :
tell application "System Events" to set PShop to name of every process where name contains "Photoshop"
set AppliName to item 1 of PShop
if Photoshop is not running at that time, I suggest you to have a script which looks to every files of folder Application whose name contains Photoshop.
I have an OS X app, let's call it TestOSX.app. This is its displayed name (taken from the Info.plist CFBundleName key as far as I can tell).
For a variety of reasons (it can be circumvented by copying the app to another place or by opening it from Terminal; it does not work if CFBundleExecutable is not the binary per-se but a script that sets up some stuff before launching the binary itself...), I cannot rely on OS X's built-in policy to block someone from starting a second instance of the app, nor can I use the LSMultipleInstancesProhibited key. But I do want to make sure that every second instance started by the same user is going to quit before being able to modify some resources. Different users should be able to run their own single instace of the app at the same time (this is why LSMultipleInstancesProhibited is no-go).
(I wanted to build a mechanism relying on flock(1) but it does not exist under OS X.)
So, the strategy is: when a user launches my app, first check whether an older version is already running; if there is, send this latest app instance (that the script has been executed "from") a request to quit, and bring the old instance to foreground.
I cannot use the name of the process per-se, as the app may use some embedded tools (like a proprietary updater) which will have a different name than the app itself. This is why something like this won't work:
tell application "System Events"
set listOfProcesses to (name of every process where background only is false)
end tell
, as the identified process may simply say updater (which is a part of the TestOSX bundle).
I have a snippet, probably parts of the "big thing", but it doesn't work as expected:
tell application "System Events"
set theProcess to first application process whose displayed name is "TestOSX"
set theOtherProcess to second application process whose displayed name is "TestOSX"
set frontmost of theOtherProcess to true
end tell
, this one always brings to front only the 1st app's process.
And I don't get it why it doesn't work as expected, as long as:
tell application "System events"
set listOfProcesses to (name of every process whose (dsiplayed name is "TestOSX"))
end tell
returns both instances. I guess somewhere the mapping between the process and the name is being lost.
[Edit]
Tried to modify the snippet above using:
tell application "System Events"
set theOtherProcess to id of second application process whose displayed name is "TestOSX"
set frontmost of theOtherProcess to true
end tell
, yet I get the error:
"Can't set frontmost of 680102 to true."
(This may be because I have a script that actually launches the binary, as said above?)
Okay, I came up with an ugly solution.
The bash script that is launched by double-clicking on the app icon is going to check how many instances of my app are running (with the aid of an AppleScript). If the answer is more than one, the bash script will end, thus my whole app terminating.
My launcher.command script:
#!/bin/bash
val=$(osascript ./instances_counter.scpt "TestOSX")
and the instances_counter.scpt, making use of the argument I passed:
on run argv
tell application "System Events"
set theProcessList to every application process whose displayed name is item 1 of argv
set noOfProcesses to count of theProcessList
end tell
return noOfProcesses
end run
That's it.
The example I can think of that is most relevant to me is to be able to close the last.fm app when I close iTunes. I quite often forget to close last.fm and I find it rather annoying. I'm sure there are other uses...
Yes you can.
Over on my Blog thecocoaquest I have two posts that cover this.
The first Post shows you a methods of doing this with a applescript and using a Launch Agent.
Applescript – Quit or Launch Application if another is or is not running
Here is one of the examples:
If I have one App running the second app will launch and will always be running while the first app is running.
Or when I quit the first App the second app will also quit
#!/usr/bin/osascript
#Copyright Mark Hunte 2012
#http://www.markosx.com/thecocoaquest/kill-one-application-if-another-is-not-running-applescript
set appMustBeRunning to "xcode"
set appToKill to "Snippets"
tell application "System Events"
set appMustBeRunningID to (unix id of processes whose name is appMustBeRunning)
set appToKillID to (unix id of processes whose name is appToKill)
end tell
if appMustBeRunningID is {} then
try
tell application "Snippets" to quit
end try
else if appToKillID is {} then
tell application "Snippets" to launch
end if
The Second post is a revision showing how to add more than one master & slave application
Applescript – Quit or Launch Application script.. ( Revised )
Also has an a script for if you just want to run the Applescript as an Application.
Consider the following AppleScript:
on is_running(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end is_running
set safRunning to is_running("Safari")
if safRunning then
tell application "Safari"
-- Stuff I only want executed if Safari is running goes here.
end tell
return "Running"
else
return "Not running"
end if
The problem: when I run this via the osascript command line utility, if Safari is not running, it gets launched and the script reports "Running". This is not the behaviour I desire or would expect. Note that it works as desired/expected when run within AppleScript Editor.
Is this an osascript bug / known issue? Or is it somehow intended behaviour for reasons I'm missing? Can anyone get it to work as desired? (BTW I'm running OSX 10.7.5; I can't see how to get osascript to report a version number).
If you comment out the tell / end tell lines, it behaves as I'd expect: if Safari is not running, it doesn't launch it, and prints "Not running". So it seems to me like the tell is what's causing Safari to be launched, but it doesn't need to be actually executed, just present in the script...? For a while I wondered if maybe this was just how tell is supposed to work, but since it doesn't work like this in AppleScript Editor, I guess not...
In fact, here's another, madder, version with similar behaviour:
on is_running(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end is_running
set safRunning to is_running("Safari")
return safRunning
if false then
tell application "Safari"
end tell
end if
This still always launches Safari, even though tell is inside an if false block after the return statement! (But again, this is fine in AppleScript Editor.)
BTW, this behaviour isn't limited to Safari, but it also isn't universal:
Affected apps include: Safari, TextEdit, iPhoto, AppleScript Editor, iTerm, ...
Non-affected apps include: Google Chrome, iTunes, Preview, Mail, Terminal, Address Book, Echofon, ...
So, does anyone have any ideas about how I might fix or route around this? Is it an osascript bug? Or am I missing something about AppleScript's semantics?
For context: I'm trying to write a script (to be embedded/called from some python) which queries open browsers for the URLs of any tabs they have open; I've got it all working fine except that it always launches Safari, whether it's open or not. I've boiled down that undesirable behaviour to the simple test case shown above. I'm not aware of any way to run this script from python without using osascript, other than appscript, which I don't want to use because it's no longer developed/supported/recommended.
Many thanks for all inputs / insights!
I suspect the reason you are getting this is because each time you call the script from the command line with osascript the script is being compiled.
The act of compiling on a tell application will afaik make the app launch.
Calling the script from the command line with osascript from a pre-compiled file i.e .scpt does not cause this behaviour because the is no compiling to be done.
But calling it from a plain text (.txt,.sh ) file will so the app will launch.
If you do not want to use a .scpt file and want to use a plain text file then you could try the trick of putting a run script command in the applescript.
on is_running(appName)
tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end is_running
set safRunning to is_running("Safari")
if safRunning then
run script "tell application \"Safari\"
open location \"http://google.com\"
end tell"
return "Running"
else
return "Not running"
end if
The script in the run script is only compiled when needed. You will need to escape any characters like quotes as in my example.
It will be easier if you write the script in a normal applescript document first and compiled it to check for errors.
Then copy it to the plain text file.
UPDATE **
The method I used above was from a old script I had used to solved this issue a while before I answered here.
The answer works and is not trying to be elegant. ;-)
I actually like user1804762 method below. As it does work but feel the Answer is not clear enough so I will give an example on using it.
set appName to "Safari"
if application appName is running then
tell application id (id of application appName)
open location "http://google.com"
end tell
return "Running"
else
return "Not running"
end if
This script can be run from the command line with osascript
example:
osascript /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/foo.scpt
Notice that the script is saved as a compiled script. This will work ok and you can also save and use it as a plain text script.
i.e.
osascript /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/foo.applescript
Some Info:
"Enhanced Application Object Model":
tell application "iTunes"
if it is running then
pause
end if
end tell
You can also do it that way:
if application "iTunes" is running then
tell application "iTunes" to quit
end if
You can also do this:
get name of application "iTunes"
get version of application "iTunes"
And to complete the journey:
get id of application "TextEdit" --> "com.apple.TextEdit"
tell application id "com.apple.TextEdit"
make new document
end tell
That was the "Enhanced Application Object Model". If an app still launches (for example, the first time you compile & execute the script) I assume it is because AS has to get some info from the app which it did not found in the dictionary (or something like that...?).
OK, I know this question is really old, but I stumbled on it looking for a different issue and had to pipe in considering how complicated some of these responses are.
The simple code to achieve what you want(ed) is:
tell application "System Events"
if application process "Safari" exists then
-- do stuff you want to do only if Safari exists
end if
end tell
On older systems, the syntax used to be:
tell application "System Events"
if exists of application process "Safari" is true then
-- do stuff you want to do only if Safari exists
end if
end tell
One of these should definitely work for you, intrepid searcher of Applescript solutions for action only when an app is running.
Oh! Bonus tip: And if you're not sure what the application process name is exactly (it is usually but not always the app name), before coding your final script run…
tell application "System Events"
get every application process
end tell
And find your app process name in the results.
Here's a screen grab of running that command. (Note the zillions of Google Chrome Helper instances. Thanks Google!)
HTH!
tell application "Finder"
set applicationsnames to get the name of every process whose visible is true
end tell
set appName to "Safari"
if applicationsnames does not contain appName then
say (appName & " is not running")
--add here what you want to happen
end if
return applicationsnames
This is returning {"Finder", "JavaAppLauncher", "firefox", "Microsoft Word", "iTunes", "AppleScript Editor"} for me
Hope this helps
All the previously made answers suffer from the same issue, though:
They look for the app by its name. However, the user may rename the app, and then the script will believe the app does not run, when in fact it does.
To properly check for a running app, it should be found by its bundle ID, which the user cannot change.
The bundle ID can be inquired with this command, for instance, when the app is already running:
tell application "System Events"
get bundle identifier of application process "Safari"
end tell
Or like this for any installed app:
get id of application "Safari"
To check whether an app with a particular bundle ID is running, use this code:
tell application "System Events"
set ids to bundle identifier of every application process
if ids contains "com.apple.safari" then
return "Running"
else
return "Not running"
end if
end tell
Furthermore, here's an example to check if an app is running, then quit it, then relaunch it, ensuring that the very same app is relaunched that was running before, and not some other copy that may also exist:
set bundleID to "com.apple.safari"
set apps to runningApps(bundleID)
set appCount to length of apps
if appCount is not 0 then
quit application id bundleID
repeat while length of runningApps(bundleID) = appCount
-- wait for the app to quit
end repeat
open first item of apps
end if
on runningApps(bundleID)
-- The try block is to catch the rare case of having more than one
-- copy of an app running at the same time. Unfortunately, in that
-- case this code will not run as expected, because we don't get the
-- correct list of multiple items back then. But at least the script
-- will not crash from it but handle it gracefully.
tell application "System Events"
try
return application file of (every application process whose bundle identifier = bundleID)
end try
end tell
return {}
end runningApps
I had the same problem as described here trying to set up an AppleScript (triggered by a BetterTouchTool gesture) that plays/pauses VLC or iTunes, but only iTunes if VLC is not running (due to my workflow) and, naturally, only VLC while it's running. (I use the automatic pause/play trigger for iTunes in VLC's settings, for launch and quit of the app.)
VLC was always launched on the first use of the BetterTouchTool-trigger after every relaunch of BTT as the dictionary-cache is deleted at that point and the AppleScript handler has to launch every scripted application if a tell is aimed at it in order to call its dictionary.
I didn't find anything that avoided this anywhere; there were some attempts, but none worked for me as the dictionary-call by the script handler is nothing we can influence. I came up with this dirty workaround:
Create a separate AppleScript file only containing the line that includes the tell for VLC
Save it at some place where it won't annoy you
Replace the line containing the tell in the original AppleScript with a line that runs that script
This will lead to the first compilation of the script not calling the application (VLC, in my case) directly, only the script, which means that the application will not need to launch.
VLC will need to launch once that separate file is called, but, well, if you call that file in order to tell VLC something, you will have VLC already opened (or will want it open) anyway.
The AppleScript I call through my BetterTouchTool-trigger (a specific tap on the trackpad, in my case) looks like this:
if application "iTunes" is running and not application "VLC" is running then
tell application "iTunes" to playpause
end if
if application "VLC" is running then
run script "/Users/jannis/bin/PlayVLC.scpt"
end if
The separate AppleScript file ("PLayVLC.scpt, saved in a folder called "bin" in my user folder which I created manually ages ago for such purposes) is just this:
tell application "VLC" to play
If you open that script manually, it will of course also launch VLC. But that hopefully won't be necessary often, or ever.
I actually have no idea if this creates any deeper problems I don't know of as I'm not a pro coder; if so, please notify me. I hope this helps anyone!