Take Control of Automating Your Mac, 5th Edition

Use a Macro Utility

Earlier in this book, I discussed Shortcuts, Automator, and AppleScript, three tools that can control numerous other apps and tie multiple actions together into easy-t0-run shortcuts. All those technologies are powerful, free, and included with macOS.

But AppleScript’s learning curve precludes casual use, while it’s limited by the capabilities various apps choose to expose. Automator and Shortcuts are far easier for a beginner to use, but they, too, have fairly constrained palettes of capabilities—and not all the tasks you might wish to automate fit their “workflow” mold. Meanwhile, apps like Excel and Nisus Writer Pro have fantastic automation capabilities built in, but they’re largely confined to activities within those ...