I am trying to write an Automator script, that replaces a given text by some other text. I followed the steps in
Editing text in Automator
which are the same as given by a bunch of blog posts covering this topic and may vary with regards to the language the script is written in. I tried with AppleScript and with bash.
My (reduced example) bash script is:
echo hello
I have selected the option "Output replaces selected text".
I tried the script when selecting text in Xcode, TextEdit and another app. The text is not replaced (it remains the same). The script is executed - as I tested via say hello inside of the script. Also I followed the setup of:
http://www.kevincallahan.org/software/services.html
to make sure my script is enabled in "System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services -> [√] myService", because this tool used to work on my machine and it should have the same requirements for replacing text inside a TextView like the script I am going to write. Also I read the answer:
Automator not working inside xcode
from which I could not deduct, what "give xcode access to be able to modify accessibility settings" means. I am running macOS 10.13.4.
I finally figured something out. After creating a copy of the script in the file system, the copy worked. The only difference was the name. Indeed, if I renamed the original script, it worked. The name was "resolveConflicts". I have no app in my PATH with the same name. The only place I used the same name was inside SourceTree -> Preferences -> Custom Actions. Renaming the action in SourceTree did not allow me to successfully run the script with the name "resolveConflicts". In the end I could not figure out, with which name the scripts collided. I also checked /System/Library/Services and /System/Services. No scripts with same name existed there. I sticked with a different name.
Related
I have an Automator Quick Action (QA) which calls a bash script to act on files within a specified folder. It works great when run inside Automator. But invoking the Quick Action from Finder by right clicking on the input folder does nothing with no errors or log files (as far as I can tell). screenshot of Automator code at link. My first bash code, and first question on stack-overflow - thanks to anyone in advance who might be able to assist. Apple silicon mackbook pro; running Mac OS 12.4.
Additional Info: The QA gets a selected folder and passes it to the bash shell script via "$a" argument. The selected folder will contain text files (.SRT) and movie files (.MP4). The bash script does some text parsing and passes on arguments to the Exiftool program which adds GPS metadata to the movie files.
Workaround found: I was able to import the automator workflow into the Mac OS Shortcuts App and the automation ran successfully via a menu bar command on my Mac.
I had the same issue for a long time trying to invoke a python program from bash shell script using quick action. It runs with no error in the editor and would run only if I left the workflow open all of the time in Automator. I eventually stumbled across a permission issue with Automator itself. I hope this could help you maybe?:
1 - Go "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy"
2 - Select "Accessibility" from the left-hand menu.
3 - Unlock to make changes, if necessary, then click the "+" sign at the bottom of the right-hand menu.
4 - Add "Automator" as a trusted app.
Hope it helps!
I am fairly new to Mac OSX, and am trying to create an .app file to run in the Applications folder. I'm using MacOS Big Sur, and this will just be run on a Mac (it doesn't need to be cross platform). There is a jar file that executes by running a shell script, as well as a few extra resource files, so ultimately I'd like to bundle this all together in something like a dmg so that I can share it easily with a few other people.
I followed the advice given here and here to set it all up, and almost everything works. The program starts when I double click on the .app file, but without a terminal window. Unfortunately I need the terminal window to open because I use it to log messages to the user.
Terminal is the default app for the shell script, and a terminal does open when I run the shell script directly by double-clicking on it. The script file works with an .sh extension and without one, though I get an error trying to run the .app if the script has an .sh extension. Everything has execute permissions. I went through the Info.plist docs but couldn't find anything about the Terminal. I also tried creating the .app with Automator, but with the same result.
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated, as at the moment I'm completely stuck. As I said, ultimately I want to have a way of sharing this with others who may not be very computer-savvy (e.g. they're used to just downloading things from the App Store and wouldn't be able to install things using the command line). So if I'm going about this all wrong or there's an easier way, then let me know that too.
Unfortunately I need the terminal window to open because I use it to log messages to the user.
If this is all you want the Terminal app for then you don’t need it all.
The Terminal app is a GUI app which runs a shell using standard OS calls, passes keyboard input to that shell (and hence any commands it in turns invokes) via a pipe, and reads the output of the shell (and hence...) and displays it in a window.
You can run your shell script direct from your own app, collect the output, and dimply that output in a window in your app.
In Objective-C the classes you want to look up are NSTask, to run a shell passing it your shell script, and NSPipe, to create pipes needed.
There are plenty of Q & A’s on SO about NSTask/NSPipe, here is one and here is another which uses Swift.
Note that both of the above read all of the output before converting it to a string which can then be displayed in a window or otherwise processed. This is not required and if you have a long running shell script and wish to display output as it runs you can read shorter chunks from the pipe. Read the documentation to see how to do this.
I'm posting my solution in case it helps anyone in the future. As the comments/answers said, what I really needed to know was how to get my app to open a terminal window. Obviously by creating the app manually (creating the folder structure and minimal Info.plist) I was missing some key elements.
I tried to generate one using Xcode. I'm sure it's pretty straightforward, but I got bogged down trying to work out the Swift code.
What worked for me was creating an AppleScript using Script Editor. The script simply tells the Terminal program to run my bash script:
tell application "Terminal"
do script "/Applications/{name of app}/Contents/MacOS/run.sh;exit"
end tell
The key is that Script Editor can save this as an app to the Applications folder, which means it creates the necessary folder structure and files. After that I could just copy my program files into the MacOS folder, which is where my bash script looks for everything.
One option might be to give the script file the extension .command, e.g., and then open that, e.g.:
open myscript.command
The myscript.command file needs execute permissions (chmod a+x myscript.command).
These .command files can also be double-clicked in Finder to execute them in a new Terminal window.
I would like to add a context menu item in MacOS Mojave which gives the option to create a new file in the finder on a right click (the way you would in windows). I would also like to be able to specify the file type (text, word, html, css, javascript, etc)
I have followed a tutorial online in order to create the context menu item with automator but I am not familiar with writing shell scripts.
is it just as simple as:
for f in "$#"
do
touch "$f"
done
I was able to implement this following the instructions here: How to get Create New Text File from context menu
The only drawback as it stands is that you need to select a folder in finder to get the context menu. I would like to be able to click in the current I am in and get the menu but I can live with this. Hope this helps someone else.
This tool provides the "Create a file here" option out of the box. With this tool you can easily create your own options as well by writing simple shell scripts. The tool is free and the page has a link to the source if you want to check the source. The source has a shell script that creates a file in a directory that is given as an argument to the script. The script avoids file name conflicts when creating new files.
I thought this would be easy. The Google makes me think otherwise.
What I want is a poor man's inter-OS clipboard. Everything I looked at on the net is either not free, no app this simple should cost anybody anything, or isn't compatible with local linux installs or Windows or some such.
In the best solution a right mouse action would be added to "cut", "copy" and "paste" named something like "copy to file". The file might or might not exist but would have a fixed name and be on a shared disk.
I guess I'd need a second right mouse action "Paste from file" to complement the "copy to file".
So, would some one show me how to have an AppleScript or, maybe, Automator, take the current text contents of the clipboard and paste into an existing file, overwriting any
existing contents of the file?
OS/X Snow Leopard
Thanks.
how to have an AppleScript […], take the current text contents of the clipboard and paste into an existing file, overwriting any existing contents of the file
AppleScript code:
do shell script "pbpaste > /path/to/your/clipboard-file.txt"
In order to read text from the file back into the clipboard, use
do shell script "cat /path/to/your/clipboard-file.txt | pbcopy"
For documentation, see man pbpaste
EDIT: Now, to convert the AppleScript into a Mac OS X Service, which will appear in the "Services" group of every context menu (at right-click / CTRL+click on any text), you can use Automator, as described in this tutorial.
I am from a windows background and trying to help a mac user friend to backup her pictures, docs, etc. onto an external drive. In windows, I would accomplish this by creating a simple batch file with an xcopy command and have a shortcut on the desktop that pointed to that .bat file when double clicked. However, in the mac world I am having significant trouble finding how to do this. I have searched repeatedly to find the mac equivalent, but all I find are sites saying things like "there are so many options on a mac - use one of them." However, none have ever given a specific solution nor pointed to a specific solution. Anyone here know of a specific step by step process to accomplish this? I simply want to be able to have her double click an icon on the desktop and have it copy her personal documents (not application settings or other overhead) to her external hard drive. Any help would be appreciated.
Create the batch file, which is usually called a shell script.
Enter all the commands that you want to run.
Set the executable bit, this is done with chmod +x path-to-the-file in Terminal.
Show info for the script and set Terminal to the application which should open it.
However, what I've done in similar situations and that I would recommend that you do is that I've created a shell script and instead of using Terminal I've initiated it from an AppleScript application. You can of course embed the entire shell script in the AppleScript as well. Basically it will look something like the following:
on run
do shell script "rsync -av ~/Pictures /Volume/Backup"
end run
Repeat the do shell ... line for each folder that you want to copy, or call the shell script itself. Then use AppleScript Editor which is included with Mac OS X and save it as an actual application.