2 part question:
I'm simply trying to run programs using applescript from the terminal, so I tried:
$ osascript tell application "iTunes" to activate
and get the error:
osascript: tell: No such file or directory
Giving the full path to the program did not work either. What am I missing? The second part of the question is what I eventually want to use applescript for. I would like to use it to open an application I built using py2app. Can applescript open any mac app or just certain ones that are already compatible.
Thanks
Try this. Notice you use "-e" when you are writing the command. Without "-e" you would give a path to an applescript to run. Also notice the string command must be in quotes.
osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\" to activate"
And if you have a multi-line applescript you use "-e" before each line like this...
osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\"" -e "activate" -e "end tell"
If you want to open an application just use the unix "open" command...
open "/path/to/application"
If you wanted to open an application using applescript and the "activate" command doesn't work (it should work for almost everything though) then tell the Finder to open it. Remember that applescript uses colon delimited paths...
osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to open file \"path:to:application\""
In a bash shell (like in Terminal), you can send multiple lines to osascript by using a "here document".
osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\"" -e "activate" -e "end tell"
becomes
osascript <<EOF
tell application "iTunes"
activate
end tell
EOF
As an old-skool Unix hacker, I save these little snippets in my $HOME/bin directory and call them from the command line. Still learning the particulars, though.
Alan
an alternative to osascript:
open -a Calendar
close by:
pkill Calendar
Try:
do shell script "open /Applications/iTunes.app"
you need to put single quotes around the tell:
osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to activate'
otherwise you're defining a variable when you run -e
I'am new to script too.
I am confused to so I scan an essay named AppleScript Language Guide
and when I go through script commands items, I learn that if you want to activate an application in mac os with applescript editor you should type beneath code in your editor and then compile and run them! may this answer will help you, here's code:
// applescript editor code
----------
activate application "iTunes" line 1
----------
tell application "iTunes" to activate line 2
Related
I'm on macOS which is currently using the zshell.
I would like to run a command in one shell which opens another shell preferably in another tab in the same window and then runs a given command. For example:
> openTab
would open another tab and run a basic command like ls.
Is this possible to do?
It appears that the open command will open new window, but I want it to be opened as a new tab in the current window. See here
Osascript appears a bit messy, is there way to do this natively with zshell?
You can use AppleScript, via osascript to do exactly that:
function runInNewTab() {
osascript >/dev/null <<EOF
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down
end tell
tell application "Terminal" to do script "$*" in front window
EOF
}
Run it like this:
runInNewTab ls -l ~
I'm running OS X 10.10.2. I'm facing a weird issue where AppleScript won't launch applications from shebang'ed scripts while working fine everywhere else (Script Editor, piping to osascript, etc.). Specifically, consider the following example script named launch-app:
#!/usr/bin/osascript
launch application "TextEdit"
When TextEdit is not running and I do
./launch-app
I get
./launch-app:0:29: execution error: An error of type -10810 has occurred. (-10810)
When I do
<launch-app osascript
Well, it works just fine; which means the following Bash script will also work:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
osascript <<EOF
launch application "TextEdit"
EOF
Really weird. (By the way, a tell ... activate ... end tell block results in the same error. I'm using launch here just to keep to example minimal.)
I have some old scripts that involve activating an application (well, practically all my old scripts involve tell ... activate ... end tell) that definitely worked in the past. I can't tell when things began to fall apart because when I run those scripts, most often the applications to activate are already launched. I have the impression that the issue dates back at least to 10.10.1.
I have looked at several related posts here on SO, e.g., this one, but they don't help. I also tried to understand error -10810 by reading articles like this one, but my problem definitely doesn't look like a filled process table (otherwise why does directly calling osascript works while running osascript from a shebang doesn't?).
Update: The bug has been fixed in OSX 10.10.3.
Just to provide a state-of-the-union post:
The behavior observed is a bug in OSX 10.10 still unresolved as of OSX 10.10.2 (as of 10 Mar 2015):
Anyone interested in getting this fixed should file their own bug at http://bugreport.apple.com.
It applies to executable scripts that are directly or indirectly passed to osascript - whether:
explicitly (osascript launch-app)
or implicitly, via the shebang line, by direct invocation (./launch-app)
The specific form of the shebang line is irrelevant (whether #!/usr/bin/osascript or #!/usr/bin/env osascript or #!/usr/bin/env osascript -l JavaScript or ...), what matters is whether the file has the executable bit (permission) set (e.g., via chmod +x).
Workarounds:
As suggested by the OP, feed the file to osascript via stdin: osascript < launch-app
This has side effects; for instance, name of me will report msng instead of the name of the script.
Remove the executable bit from the script and invoke it explicitly with osascript:
chmod -x launch-app # a one-time operation
osascript launch-app # with the executable bit unset, this should work
Looking at the man page for osascript, when you send lines of applescript code you should put the "-e" option infront of each separate line.
So here's what I tested. I made a bash script with the -e option...
#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'launch application "TextEdit"'
And one without.
#!/bin/bash
osascript 'launch application "TextEdit"'
The one without the -e option does not run. As such I think this could be a cause of your problem... there's no -e option in your code.
Note that I tested your code too and got the same error as you. There's a command line utility "/usr/bin/macerror" and I entered your error code into that. Here's the result.
Unknown error (-10810) at /usr/bin/macerror5.18 line 40, <DATA> line 1.
Good luck.
There is no need for using osascript to launch applications. There is a built in command line utility named open, that will open your app from the terminal commandline, or a shebanged script. For doucumentation, enter "man open" in a terminal window. It is a really nifty utility, with a lot of options. :)
The open utility, will lauch applications that are not running, but I also wonder out of curiosity: have you tried "tell application appname to run", or just "tell application appname to activate"?
The osascript below, works for me, on 10.9
#!/usr/bin/osascript
tell application "TextEdit" to launch
I guess you'll have to commmand the app to do something, and not just try to "launch" it. Maybe "tell me to launch application appname also works".
Edit
I prefer to use open -b "com.apple.textedit", because then I also get the front window of textEdit, brought to front.
By the way, with the open -e command, you can open a textfile directly into TextEdit from the commandline. open is not totally as good as the plumb utility of plan-9, but it is really nifty.
I know that you can create aliases in the ~/.bash_profile that automate bash commands like:
alias fly="ssh username#ip_address -p22"
But I was wondering if it was possible to automate tasks within applications on the Mac. So, for example, I know that you can make an alias to open the System Preferences:
alias sys="open /Applications/System\ Preferences.app/"
But how do you automate navigating within the System Preferences app? For example, I find myself opening the System Preferences, typing 'network', and then pressing enter frequently to navigate to the Network settings.
Is there a way to automate these series of steps with an alias? Or are aliases limited to bash commands?
Shell aliases are limited to shell commands. But many OS X applications can be controlled by AppleScript commands, and those can be issued with the shell command osascript. Quoting gets a little tricky, though, because your AppleScript commands often contain quotes, which then need to be wrapped in another layer of quotes in the shell command, which then need to be wrapped in another layer of quotes when you define the alias.
See macosxautomation.com for notes on using AppleScript (and this page for System Preferences specifically). To get System Preferences to show the Network pane, you could use this AppleScript:
tell application "System Preferences"
reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
activate
end tell
...which can be issued with this osascript command (note that each line of the script corresponds to a -e argument, and the AppleScript double-quotes are wrapped in single-quotes for the shell):
osascript -e 'tell application "System Preferences"' -e 'reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.network"' -e 'activate' -e 'end tell'
And you could create an alias for this:
alias networkprefs="osascript -e 'tell application \"System Preferences\"' -e 'reveal pane id \"com.apple.preference.network\"' -e 'activate' -e 'end tell'"
Note that I had to escape the double-quotes that're intended for AppleScript consumption... rather confusing. I'd use a shell function instead (similar to an alias, but without the quoting weirdness):
networkprefs() {
osascript -e 'tell application "System Preferences"' -e 'reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.network"' -e 'activate' -e 'end tell'
}
I am trying to find a method to combine two scripts so that they can be run in one go. However, it would be useful if both scripts still ran in separate windows as I need to look through the logs for certain bits of information. Any help would be much appreciated!
If you have X11 installed (e.g. XQuartz), you can run your scripts in new xterm windows:
xterm -e ./scriptA.sh & xterm -e ./scriptB.sh &
But if you want to use the default OSX Terminal.app, this should work:
open -a Terminal.app ./scriptA.sh; open -a Terminal.app ./scriptB.sh
I tried passing arguments to the scripts using the --args parameter to open, but for some reason it didn't work for me.
Update
The more OSX idiomatic way to do this is seems to be to start Terminal.app from an Applescript snippet with the osascript command:
osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"scriptA.sh <args>\""
osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"scriptB.sh <args>\""
The quotes are escaped so you can e.g. do variable expansions from the calling bash for the script args.
Is there a way in bash on a mac to draw a pretty info box that displays a simple message like "please save all files to /Users/......"
You can run fragments of applescript from you bash scripts.
A simple popup would look like this:
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/osascript <<-EOF
tell application "System Events"
activate
display dialog "Hello world"
end tell
EOF
This will feed the applescript between the EOF tags to osascript and execute it
(resulting in a Hello World popup).
An alternative to osascript "System Events" would be to install cocoaDialog.
cocoaDialog has the disadvantage that it must be installed, but it seems to be much more flexible than the "System Events".
The license is GPL, so you can freely redistribute it, since it is a separate application.
(osascript was littering my terminal with error messages (at least under Lion) and with return values, it didn't let me do popups with timeouts, and seemed to require specific quoting which made it hard to use variables in the texts.)