Applescript Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Sal Soghoian talks Automator use in education

by Dave Caolo (Nov 13th, 2009)

Total Apps has published a nice guest post from Sal Soghoian, Apple's Production Manager for Automator, intended for teachers. He describes how educators have a limited amount of instruction time with the kids, and even less for maintenance tasks like making sure the proper software is installed, ...

Batch move your playlists to an iTunes folder

by Sang Tang (Oct 22nd, 2009)

Folders, which have been a feature of iTunes since iTunes 5.0, serve as a means to better organize your music. For example, you could create genre- or artist-based folders with corresponding playlists nested within them. But moving playlists into folders isn't the most fun thing, and can be ...

Snow Leopard Services in practice: Amazon S3 uploader

by Brett Terpstra (Sep 6th, 2009)

I stumbled upon a great example of the Snow Leopard Services that I've been drooling over. The S3 Upload Service by August Lilleaas is available as a workflow which can be opened in Automator, so you can examine its inner workings. It uses AppleScript and Ruby, easily passed back and forth thanks to ...

Use iCal to tweet automatically

by Aron Trimble (Jul 17th, 2009)

Recently, the question came up of how to automatically "tweet" a birthday message to a friend or loved one on their special day. After thinking on this question for some time I finally came to a solution. As it turns out, intrepid TUAW blogger Dave Caolo wrote a Mac 101 article all about attaching ...

Lyric fetchin' lovin': how to batch fetch lyrics with GimmeSomeTune and Needle Drop

by Sang Tang (Jul 14th, 2009)

One neat little thing about the iPod and iPhone family of devices is their ability to display lyrics -- supported by all iPod nanos as well as the iPhone/iPod touch, and iPod Classic 5th generation and higher. On the iPhone and iPod touch, lyrics show up when a song is loaded (and can be ...

Great beginner's guide to AppleScript

by Dave Caolo (Jul 8th, 2009)

Many years ago I started playing with AppleScript. For some reason, it failed to hold my attention, though I know you can do many cool tricks with it. Perhaps I'd still be at it if I had found an overview like the one posted at AppStorm. This well-written guide starts with the basics and builds from ...

iTunes 101: How to prevent podcasts from spoiling

by Sang Tang (Jul 8th, 2009)

Like milk, podcasts will spoil if left unused for a period period of time -- at least in the mind of iTunes. iTunes will automatically unsubscribe from a podcast that hasn't been listened to within the last 5 updates, and more than 5 days have passed since an episode was played. The rationale, as ...

Meerkat 1.2, 100% more AppleScript support

by Brett Terpstra (May 27th, 2009)

If you work from non-secure networks (coffeehouses, airports, hotels, etc.), or if you've ever wanted to bypass a firewall (YouTube or TUAW blocked at work?) you may be familiar with SSH tunneling. It's come up more than once here on TUAW. It allows you to conduct your Internet business through a ...

AppleScript: Exploring the power of Folder Actions, part III

by Cory Bohon (Mar 26th, 2009)

So far in this AppleScript feature we've covered what folder actions are and how to create them. In this AppleScript post, I'm going to tell you how to create your own custom scripts and add them to your folder actions list. If you work with file permissions a lot, then you know how crazy it can ...

AppleScript: Exploring the power of Folder Actions, part II

by Cory Bohon (Feb 23rd, 2009)

In the last AppleScript post, I mentioned some of the useful ways to create Folder Actions, and showed you how to use one of the built-in scripts to perform a pretty useful action. In this AppleScript post, we'll dive into the built-in scripts in more detail, and I will tell you how each of them ...

AppleScript: Exploring the power of Folder Actions, part I

by Cory Bohon (Feb 16th, 2009)

Welcome to Part I of this mini AppleScript feature on creating useful folder actions. We'll have more posts on this topic coming up, but for now, let's introduce what a folder action is. Have you ever wanted to just drop a file into a folder and have something magically happen? Say, have a file ...

Revisiting the randomized signature AppleScript, now with API goodness

by Brett Terpstra (Feb 10th, 2009)

When I shared an AppleScript last week which created randomized signatures using TextExpander, I promised to revisit it when the iheartquotes.com API started working again. It's working right now, but it seems to go up and down; check this link before you try the script and make sure you get a ...

Random Signatures with TextExpander and AppleScript

by Brett Terpstra (Feb 2nd, 2009)

TextExpander, a $29.95US utility which inserts snippets of text or images when you type a preset string of characters, has long been a TUAW favorite. I only recently learned that it can run AppleScripts within a snippet, which opened up a world of fun for me. Here's a quick script demonstrating how ...

AppleScript 1-2-3 now available from Peachpit Press

by Steven Sande (Dec 24th, 2008)

Mac users rejoice! Santa brought just what you wanted, a new book about AppleScript by the two of the top wizards of the Mac automation world. Apple's Product Manager for Automation, Sol Soghoian, and Bill Cheeseman, who is a noted developer in his own right, have announced the publication of ...

Mac Automation: Rename multiple files efficiently

by Cory Bohon (Nov 11th, 2008)

With Automator, you can easily streamline common tasks. If you work with many files (i.e. pictures), then you know how easy it is to lose track because of incorrectly named files. With this Automator workflow, you'll never lose your place (or a file) again. Building the Workflow To create this ...