Apple automation guru, Ben Waldie, joins David and Katie to discuss incorporating Automator and AppleScript into your Mac workflows.
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Thank you for an extraordinarily helpful program. I’ve tinkered with Automator for years without ever really engaging with it, but this episode really inspired me to get back in there and see what I can be doing with it. Given the name of your show, this was a perfect topic to really help us “power users” live up to that title. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks for this great episode about Automator. Great tool that I’ve already tried, but neve give much attention. Thanks from a regular listener from Portugal. Great Podcast!
This episode properly addressed the real world problems with Automator, while also giving a view of its hopeful and science fiction possibilities.
My own experience attempting to do something useful with Automator began with its Tiger release. Then Leopard. Then Snow Leopard. It seemed “actions” disappeared and / or were added at each iteration. Kinda’ frustrating, as if in Basic “goto” became “thengo.”
Now still running Snow Leopard I have a couple of reliable Automator actions set as “Applications.” Quit All Applications is simple, and nice because when I know I have backed up, and closed all my files, I can exit my session gracefully.
I’ve also managed to create an “Action” to same-size and reduce a folder of high res photos to 30%, much friendlier for emailing.
But as Ben kept saying, Automator does not always work as one one expect, and sometimes works inconsistently. May be the “nut behind the wheel” problem, but for most tasks (sorry David) I found it a far more efficient use of my time to carefully plan manual workflows than attempting to automate them. TextExpander is an excellent tool for naming files as they’re saved (ugh to loose of SAVE AS in Lion), and with the design of a coherently named, structured, and aliased file system, dropping the file TextExpander helped me name exactly where I want it is never more than a couple of clicks.
As to naming lots of files, I recommend NameMangler, a GUI program from Many Tricks. Cheap and very powerful. (And quite possibly based on Apple Scripts! ) http://manytricks.com/namemangler/
Even my image resizing Action has downloadable equivalents. Here’s one of many found by searching MacUpdate.com for “image resizer”
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32728/batch-image-resizer
Automator could be “fun.” Automator SHOULD be fun. But I played with it enough to conclude my effort to automate and mechanize my workflow was distracting me from getting the actual work done.
If you’re interested, play with Automator. But if you have real work you need done on a deadline, do it first. If you have repetitive tasks you want to Automate, consider apps readily available that for nominal cost ($10 for NameMangler) do it flawlessly. AND if you want to make more productive use of your Mac for everyday tasks, think through your tasks and reduce them to their essence.
Even if you decide to “Automator” ‘em, having reduced what you do to the most essential will be invaluable as you automate.
Hi Guys – thanks for this episode – I was losing space on my MacBook’s HD and needed to re-download all my iOS apps – with automator I can download them and the automatically move them to a USB HD. – All it took was a 2 step process – amazing!
I created a print dialog workflow that prints to PDF and saves it to a public dropbox folder. Workflow then opens the enclosing folder so I can copy the dropbox url.
Any recommendations on how to automatically obtain the URL to the clipboard instead?
Almost didn’t listen to this podcast because I really wasn’t that interested (or so I didn’t think) about Automator. However, I am glad that I did.
I have enjoyed many of the recent discussions about creating shortcuts for repetitive tasks but would really like to hear about how someone has tied the various methods that have been mentioned on the podcasts together.
Perhaps it is better said that I would like to hear how you guys, or others, are using such things as Automator, TextExpander, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Flux and other apps together (or even separately) in your workflow.
I doubt that no one app that is the “do all, be all”. So how do you decided which one is the best to start with and then grow into the others?
Thanks!