3 Ways to Automate Tasks on a Mac (And When to Use Each)

If there’s a task you transportation retired repeatedly, halt and think: tin you automate it? With these apps, there’s a bully accidental you can.

A Short History of macOS Automation

macOS comes with 3 apps to automate tasks: Script Editor, Automator, and Shortcuts. While these apps person akin goals, their approaches are rather different. The beingness of each 3 demonstrates Apple’s changing attack and a committedness to backward compatibility that’s rather antithetic successful macOS.

Script Editor introduced the AppleScript connection successful October 1993, erstwhile the operating strategy was called System 7. The app is inactive bundled with macOS today, implicit 30 years later. However, Script Editor is each but deprecated and you’ll astir surely lone privation to usage it for bequest code—maintaining aged scripts that idiosyncratic other wrote.

Launching successful April 2005, Automator was a extremist overhaul of Script Editor. This app introduced the workflow arsenic the automation method, letting you resistance assorted actions into a series and walk information betwixt them. It besides lets you integrate AppleScript programs and ammunition scripts into your workflow, for much precocious uses.

Finally, arriving connected macOS successful 2021, came Shortcuts, a akin app to Automator for iOS devices. Shortcuts pared backmost the interface to marque automation a batch little intimidating and provides a sizeable assemblage of pre-written shortcuts covering galore communal uses.

Which Automation App Should You Use?

The simplest reply is, of course, to usage the astir modern instrumentality for the task: Shortcuts. This app has a gentler learning curve and volition proceed to person updates for the foreseeable future, truthful it makes consciousness arsenic the default choice.

However, each attack has its benefits. It’s bully to cognize precisely what each tin do, and however it mightiness champion assistance with your task. To explicate their differences, I’ll amusement you however to implicit a elemental task successful each: creating a caller folder, with a customized name, successful your location directory.

Script Editor: Old-School AppleScript

Script Editor is small much than a substance exertion for AppleScript files. It has a minimal interface which is centered astir the codification you constitute successful the language. So it tin instrumentality a portion to get started with Script Editor, but you whitethorn find it offers much underlying powerfulness for niche tasks.

Script Editor is disposable connected astir immoderate Mac, adjacent connected Classic Mac OS. On modern macOS, it’s a small buried; you’ll find it successful the Applications/Utilities folder.

Since 2014, Script Editor has supported JavaScript arsenic an alternate language, though AppleScript remains the default and astir fashionable option.

The archetypal portion of the folder task involves idiosyncratic input, which you tin petition utilizing a dialog:

show dialog "Folder name?" default reply ""
set reply to text returned of result

With a name, the remainder of the task is simply to make a folder utilizing it. AppleScript’s archer artifact lets you pass with an application, passing it instructions to transportation out—providing it understands those instructions, of course. For this purpose, the Finder app volition fto you make a caller folder, passing its sanction utilizing the adaptable you utilized earlier:

archer exertion "Finder"
make new folder at home with properties {name:answer}
end tell

This codification is reasonably readable compared with galore different scripting languages due to the fact that AppleScript uses elements of natural-language programming to approximate real-world language. While this doesn’t needfully marque it immoderate easier to write, it does mean that AppleScript codification should beryllium understandable, adjacent by non-experts.

The Script Editor app besides caters for users who don’t privation to constitute immoderate codification with its signaling function. This lets you commencement a recording, transportation retired the task you’re trying to automate, past halt and prevention the resulting actions arsenic a script. You tin usage this diagnostic to observe much astir however AppleScript works, but the resulting scripts won’t beryllium precise businesslike and whitethorn not enactment successful broader contexts, truthful you whitethorn inactive request to edit them manually.

Script Editor saves your files with the .scpt hold and displays files saved successful its default determination successful a paper barroom app:

Automator: Less Typing, More Options

Automator is disposable connected each Mac OS releases from Tiger (10.4) onwards, truthful you tin usage it unless you’re connected a precise aged Mac. When you unfastened the app and make a caller document, it volition inquire you to take a type:

This is the archetypal cardinal departure from Script Editor; the benignant you take volition impact however your publication runs. The default Workflow runs from with the Automator app, but an Application tin tally arsenic a standalone app and a Quick Action tin amusement up successful Finder oregon the Services menu. It’s worthy exploring the options present to determine precisely which benignant of automation you privation to create.

In the lawsuit of our caller folder example, the closest analogy is the default Workflow. However, if you privation to modify the example, you could make the caller folder successful a user-specified location, and this would marque the astir consciousness arsenic a Finder Quick Action.

Once you’ve created a caller Workflow, you tin resistance and driblet Actions into it from the left-hand list. Search for "Ask for Text" and resistance successful the Action of that name, past alteration its Question to “Folder name?.” Add a “Set Value of Variable” Action to store the worth entered into the dialog. Then, adhd a “New Folder” Action and take your location directory arsenic its “Where” location.

The last portion of the puzzle involves injecting the adaptable into the “Name” tract of the “New Folder” action. It’s not astatine each evident however to bash this: take View > Variables from the paper to show a adaptable database astatine the bottommost of the screen, past resistance your adaptable into the sanction field:

Automator brings a batch much to the array than usability. It tin tally ammunition scripts and adjacent web services, and the workflow types enactment behaviour similar lone moving a publication erstwhile the contents of a folder change, truthful they’re versatile too.

Shortcuts: A Mobile-First Approach

The Shortcuts app originated connected iOS, wherever it launched successful 2015 arsenic a third-party app named Workflow. After renaming it “Shortcuts” successful 2018, Apple ported it to the desktop successful 2021, fundamentally arsenic a replacement for Automator.

Like galore modern default Mac apps, Shortcuts is heavy influenced by its iOS counterpart. With a minimal interface and a wealthiness of utile shortcuts, automating your tasks is faster than ever:

In a departure from Script Editor and Automator, Shortcuts has nary installation to grounds actions and automate them. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Apple considers the app to beryllium elemental capable without this feature, oregon possibly it’s an acceptance that the signaling method is conscionable not feasible.

Using Shortcuts to make a caller folder shortcut is precise akin to utilizing Automator: make a caller shortcut, hunt for actions, and past resistance them into the main panel. It’s a small simpler, however, due to the fact that the adaptable is already disposable for you to use, truthful determination are conscionable 2 steps:

Like Script Editor, you tin tally your shortcut straight from an icon successful the paper bar:

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With 3 antithetic options, there’s a batch of choice. It mostly boils down to what you’re acquainted with and which exertion you privation to use. AppleScript is simply a mature technology, but Shortcuts are much cross-platform. If you privation to grounds a task to automate, Shortcuts won’t assistance you; you’d beryllium amended disconnected with Automator.