I am having issues with my "Automatically Add to iTunes". As a result, I am trying to make an Applescript that will be stored on my USB, and when I click on a certain Music File, I want it to launch an applescript.
I did some research, and everyone keeps telling me about Launchd. How would I use this command to run an applescript saved as .app? I want to store this Music File and the Applescript on my USB, because I have multiple computers. Can I get it to run as soon as I open a specified music file? Thank you.
I eventually figured out a way to do what I wanted, which was to somehow play a music file from inside the application. All I did was use the idea of resources because it can reference itself without having to rely on a file stored somewhere else on the system. Here's a link to essentially what I did: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/157724/applescript-path-to-files-in-applications-resources
in short, I contained the music file within the app itself and played it when it was needed.
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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.
This is only under windows env.
As I know windows os identifies associated application of a particular file by file extension.
Like wise each file (binary) starting with corresponding symbols ("starting symbols"). For an example .JPG starts with ÿØÿà. Let say I open this .JPG file in a Hex editor or a Text editor and then I change that starting symbols into another file type. for an example I can change ÿØÿà to .Eߣ (.mkv). So when I double click on the .JPG the Windows Photo Viewer says there are some errors or similar message. So I need to get some information about the application that tries to open that kind of a file. If I can, I need to open that file using the application that associated with "starting symbols".
Briefly when I open .JPG I need to open a default video player .mkv files. But It may not work for this example. Because I changed only the "starting symbols" of my .JPG.
Please give me any idea to do this.
Thanks!
When you encrypt the file, give it a new extension. e.g. Picture.jpg becomes Picture.encrypted-jpg. You then register as the handler for encrypted-jpg, decrypt the file, then launch the normal jpg handler.
When the shell is asked to perform a verb on a file, the shell does not use the contents of the file to determine which app to pass it to. The file extension is what determines how the file will be treated.
You wish to use the contents of the file to influence which app processes a shell verb. In order to do so you would need to create a launcher app that reads the file header and then decides which app to pass the file on to. You would assign your launcher app as the handler app for all file extensions that you were interested in.
Although you could do this, it would be much easier just to set the file extension appropriately.
The proper way to do this sort of thing is to replace the files with reparse points.
The downside is that this involves writing a file system filter driver, i.e., an operating system extension, which is a whole level of trouble above and beyond ordinary application programming. (Since Windows already does file encryption, I doubt it would be worth the effort.)
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.
I want to create an application on a Mac to convert multiple files (txt, pdf, doc, html, etc) to a single pdf file that can be printed. The real point is that if you have 50 texts you don't have to open every single file and click command-p.
I'm not quite sure whether the best way to do this is by creating a full-fledged app or an automator plugin (or something else). If I remember correctly there's a filter in mac os's terminal that can convert files to pdf (but I forgot what it's called).
So would an automator plugin do this well, or shall I make an app for this? Can you provide me advantages for each answer?
I've done cocoa touch programming before so I can write objective-c quite well.
Use appscript, either as an action in an automator script or standalone. The advantage is that it is very simple and will take you a fraction of the time to write an app.
Here is something very close to what you want. It sets up a drop-folder and each file dragged onto it is printed (you can use multiple-select to get what you want). It uses Apple Works 6 which doesn't support the file-types that you want.
To modify it to use the Preview application instead you need to change the tell command in the script and then google the dictionary for Preview to check which verb to use for printing.
When debugging in Xcode, how do I simulate a user starting my Cocoa droplet application by dropping one or more files onto it's application icon?
The app just opens, processes the files while displaying it's progress and then closes again.
Passing arguments (via the "Arguments" tab of the entry under "Executables") should allow this, but I could not find out how.
What I really want is to hit "Build and Go" and then have the droplet open with whatever files I need.
A last resort would be to use AppleScript or the "open" command on the command line to achieve this. I want to streamline this as much as possible.
Thanks for any pointers!
Add each absolute path to a file you want to open with the application as an argument. You may need to wrap each one in quotation marks (which shouldn't be necessary, and is a bug if it is, but I do remember needing to do).
You should be able to use variable references like $SRCROOT in order to refer to files within the project root directory.