OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Automating with Automator

You have seen that using AppleScript is an extremely powerful tool to create your own applications and make your life easier by scripting repetitive tasks simply and cleanly. OS X has an even easier tool to automate your life: Automator, which lets you build AppleScripts by dragging and dropping commands into what Apple calls a workflow to tell programs what to do.

To create a new workflow, choose File⇒New or press New, then choose Workflow in the settings sheet that appears, and click Choose. You also can create other types of scripted actions, including the following:

• Applications, a workflow that you can drag files and folders onto, similar to an AppleScript application

• Services, which are the application services available to the Finder and applications described in Chapter 12

• A plug-in for the standard Print dialog box or settings sheet (see Chapter 30) used by most applications

• A calendar alarm, which is essentially a trigger related to Calendar application conditions (Chapter 20 covers Calendar.)

• A plug-in for the Image Capture application (See Chapter 9.)

• A folder action, which is a script that runs on a folder's contents (See Chapter 4.)

The process for creating these other scripted actions is the same as for workflows, though the options may differ based on the specific type of action you are creating.

Note

If you start by creating a workflow, you can convert it to any of the other scripted actions by choosing File⇒Duplicate As ...