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Comment by gmanley

I haven't found much I couldn't script using built in automation [1] or if it's lower level one of the LUA based scripting tools like hammerspoon [2]. Mac automation is really robust. Even just the default provided tools like Automator or scripting GUI tasks via Javascript/Applescript can accomplish a lot.

Using a tool like Alfred [3] and having "workflows" attached to hotkeys for automated things works wonders. For example I have a "workflow" that lets me hit a hotkey on a playing video and it automatically creates a bookmark at that timestamp which is recorded to a SQLite DB. Any future times I open that video I get a list of bookmarks and the ability to jump to them. This script marks all the currently selected songs in iTunes as loved or the currently playing song as loved. [4]

I have a lot to complain about Mac/MacOS and the direction it's gone down recently, been using Mac since OSX came out, but automation isn't one of them. Out of curiosity what did you try to automate that you couldn't?

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

[2] http://www.hammerspoon.org

[3] https://www.alfredapp.com

[4] https://gist.github.com/gmanley/750426aa91097aeef3aee5a73a1f...

parent gmanley 5 years ago

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