Have you ever had the need to rename several hundred files, in countless subfolders? Using nothing but Automator you can have it completed in minutes..
Using the method below you can:
- Find & Replace, in either the full name or just the file extension
- Add Date or Time
- Add additional text
- Change the case of the name
- Make Sequential
This comes especially handy if you need to change the extension of countless movies for instance.. So if you want to switch M4V’s to MP4′s for compatibility with media players:
- Launch ‘Automator’ from the Applications
- Chose Workflow from the menu
- Select ‘Files and Folders’ from the Actions panel on the left hand side
- Then drag a ‘Ask for Finder Items’ to the workflow
- Now, chose a ‘Get Folder Contents’, and tick the box to ‘Repeat for Each Subfolder’
- Then select a ‘Replace Text’ object from the actions menu.
- Change the selections depending on what you are wanting to achieve and then hit the ‘Run’ button.
That’s it, it really is as easy as that.. What’s more, to make it even easier I have uploaded the workflow template for you to download here.
Using nothing but OS X Lion’s built in ‘Automater’ you can create your very own desktop based ‘Web App’ for Google’s Latitude service (or any other URL for that matter)
The process is really simple, and only required 2 ‘Automater Methods’
- Launch Apple’s Automator application, from the applications folder
- Chose Application from the document type menu
- Add the ‘Get Specified URLs’ action from the actions list
- Add the address “https://www.google.co.uk/latitude/b/0/” (or any of your choosing) to the ‘Specified URLs’ action
- Add the ‘Website Popup’ action from the actions list
- Specify the screen size and user agent you prefer – you may be best adjusting these settings and running the Automator script a few times to see which works best.
Once you are happy with your settings, and URL specified then you can save this as an Application, now when you want to launch the new desktop web app all you have to do is double click on your new Automator Application!
Simple really!
The Mac operating system comes with some pretty powerful tools out of the box. One of which, I am a big fan of. The Mac ‘Automator’ is a basic almost script editor which uses workflows to automate common tasks, and with all tools like this they can be manipulated to replace full blow applications.
A long time ago applications which downloaded entire websites at the click of a button became very popular. However they lively hoods are now hanging in the balance.
Using the automator tool you can replicate the way they used to work. I do often find myself browsing through galleries of images and needing to download all of them on the page.
To build up such a script all you need to do is launch the Automator application, from the templates window select the Workflow option:
Now, using the options on the left hand side, highlight the Internet icon in the library. Then from the ‘actions’ pane double click the ‘Get Current Webpage from Safari’. You should find you will now have a new item in the workflow on the right hand side. This item does what it says on the tin, it will capture the URL of the webpage you are currently viewing in safari.
Next you will need to double click the ‘Get Image URLs from Webpage’. This item will crawl the webpage and grab a list of URLs of any pictures included on the page.
Now select the ‘Download URLs’ item from the list. It’s although worth noting at this stage you will need to specify a destination for your images to be downloaded to. As you can see below I rip my images to a folder aptly labelled ‘Rip’ inside my images folder. I use this as a temporary holding area.
The next step in my workflow in a simple ‘Growl’ notification. This could be expanded on if you so wished, to include a script to email you on completion or something similar. Once done you should find your workflow looks something similar to the one below:
To save you having to build this from scratch, click here to download the workflow.
In the interests of security it’s best to lock your machine as soon as you leave it. Perhaps more relevant to an iMac over a MacBook (as im sure you would never leave your MacBook unattended) but still important either way.
There are a few options for locking your machine, i recently blogged about one of the more geeky methods ‘AirLock‘ which uses a bluetooth proximity system to lock you’re machine when you are more then a specified distance away. However, as we all know bluetooth sucks power faster then a Dyson vacuum cleaner sucks sand in a desert. So for a less ‘power hungry’ method you can use the ’Automator‘ to build a shortcut which locks the screen at the click of your mouse.
This method using a single line of ‘shell code’:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend
Which uses the ‘fast users’ switching method to secure your mac. Not only is this click and simple, but it’s also quite cool as the Mac screen will rotate round in a ‘cube’ like motion.
To turn this line of code into a shortcut you can run, start the Automator application using you’re favourite app launcher or click the icon in the Applications folder.
Once launched you will be presented with a choice of templates for your Automator project. For this particular project select the ‘Application’ template. Once the template has done loading type ‘Run’ into the search panel on the left. You should see the list filtering away to leave a collection of options. Double click on the ‘Run shell script’ option. Once done amend the code in the Shell script window so it looks like the following screen shot:
Once done, you can either test it using the ‘Run’ button, or save it to a location of your choice.
Now all you need to do is click the .App file to lock your machine.
If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous you can use the ‘Automator’ application to expand the project and add user prompts or logging etc.
