Mac comes with a great program call Automator that allows you to automate tasks and get things done quickly. However, few people make full use of it, either because they have this horrible misconception that it is too difficult to use, or they feel that the program doesn’t provide a benefit for them. Today, we will show you 4 useful workflow that you can do with Automator for OS X.
1. Grabbing PDF Text
This Automator Workflow is great when you have a PDF that you want to convert to an image. 1) Choose Workflow as the type. 2) Make sure Action is selected in the far-left menu. Under Library click Files & Folders. 3) To the right, select Get Selected Finder Items and drag it to the main window. 4) In the far-left menu, click PDFs.
Most PDF documents are essentially images of text. For this reason, it is difficult to accurately take text from PDFs into anything usable. However, there’s an automator workflow that can grab the PDF text and save it to a text file.
- 1 In Automator, type Command-S (⌘S) or choose “Save” from the File menu to display the saving sheet for the workflow document. 2 Enter a name for the workflow as you want it to appear in the Script Menu. 3 Choose the Scripts folder (Home Library Scripts) as the directory in which to save the workflow.
- Automator is a stock app in your OS X installation that's all about automating tasks and workflows for you. It's a fairly versatile tool that can be used for a lot of things, but the fundamental setup of an Automator document is a workflow of actions that can be run without your intervention.
- Automator Actions Automator lets people automate time consuming and repetitive tasks by constructing workflows. A workflow consists of one or more actions, each of which performs a single, specialized task in the system or an app—such as opening a file, resizing an image, or opening a webpage.
- An Automator workflow designed to make it easier to create Windows friendly zip files on a Mac aft.
1. Open Automator. Select “Application” when asked of which document you’d like to create.
2. In the “Library” column, select “Files and Folders”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Ask for Finder Items” to the “Action” section.
3. Back to the Library column, select “PDFs”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Extract PDF Text” to the “Action” section
4. In the “Extract PDF Text” item you dragged into workflow, find the option labeled “Output”. Select “Rich Text”.
5. Under “Save Output to”, select which location you’d like to save the text to.
6. Click “Command + S” to title and save the workflow. Select “Application” for “File Format”
When you need to extract text from the PDF file, simply run this workflow (or application) and select the PDF you’d like to convert. It will then grab he text from the PDF file and save it to the location you specified previously.
2. Quitting All Running Applications
When you are on Mac, there are two situations when you just need to purge yourself of all active applications.
- if you are an individual who likes to keep your Mac on throughout the day and evening, then having an application running regularly can be brutal to your system.
- On the other hand, if you are working on multiple projects at a time, your system goes into overdrive when you have multiple applications open.
This workflow allows you to have one thing working at a time.
1. Open Automator. Select “Workflow” when asked of which document you’d like to create.
2. In the “Library” column, select “Utilities”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Quit All Applications” to the “Action” section
3. To exclude certain applications from quitting, click “Add” and select the application(s)
4. Click “Command + S” to save the workflow. Select “Application” for “File Format”
You can pin this workflow (application) to the dock so next time you can just click it to close all applications.
3. Create your own clipboard manager
Copying text on Mac only allows you to have one thing on your clipboard at a time. This means, if you copy a video link and want to then copy the text from another individual, the only thing you can paste is the latter. This workflow allows you to have a text file created for everything you copy to clipboard. This will act as a simple clipboard manager and allows you to easily refer back to previous clipboards later.
1. Open Automator. Select “Workflow” when asked of which document you’d like to create.
2. In the “Library” column, select “Utilities”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Get Contents of Clipboard” to the “Action” section.
3. In the “Library” column, select “Text”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “New Text File” to the “Action” section.
4. Under “Options”, select “Show this action when workflow runs”. This will allow you to be prompted before such a file is created.
5. Click “Command + S” to save the workflow. Select “Application” for “File Format”.
You can get this workflow (application) to run during startup so everything you copy will be pasted to the text file.
4. From Text to Audio
Finally, staying with text, the last workflow we will preview is text to audio. This workflow allows you to take the text that you have copied to clipboard and have an audio file of the text saved automatically to your Mac. This is useful when taking class notes in school, needing an audio grocery list, or even for the visually impaired.
1. Open Automator. Select “Workflow” when asked of which document you’d like to create.
2. In the “Library” column, select “Utilities”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Get Contents of Clipboard” to the “Action” section.
3. In the “Library” column, select “Text”. Next to the “Library” column, in the column for program options, drag “Text to Audio File” to the “Action” section, under “Get Contents of Clipboard”.
4. Take a look around the options, make adjustments accordingly, including voice style and where the audio file is saved.
5. Click “Command + S” to title and save the workflow. Select “Application” for “File Format”
Whenever you run this workflow, it will create the audio file from the last clipboard item.
Conclusion
Automator has multiple benefits in the way you use your Mac. The program makes use of workflows to make for a more productive use of your Mac. While being an Automator master takes more time and workflows with greater difficulty, making Automator work for you in a noticeable way is easy and approachable for just about anyone. Let us know in the comments below how you have made use of the Automator program to help with making Mac usage more productive and time saving for you.
The Automator in Mac OSX is a great tool for you that allows you to automate your daily mundane task with little effort. You don’t need to have any programming background or expertise to create your own automation workflow/application. All you need to do is simply drag and drop the necessary actions and export the results as a workflow, application or as an item in the contextual menu. Well, in case you are lazy to learn or just wanted to look for some ready-made stuff to get things going, here are 24 useful automator scripts that you can used instantly. Some of them are actions script that you can import into your automator while others are workflow or application that you can use immediately.
1. Dashboarder
Dashboarder is a simple application that allows you to toggle your Dashboard on/off so as to conserve RAM when needed while still allowing easy access to widgets. (download link)
2. Maintenance
Maintenance consists of a set of Automator actions that you can use to maintain the health of your Mac. It include features like Repair Permissions, Verify Perference Files, Periodic Cleanup, Clear Cache files, Force empty trash and many other useful tasks. (download link)
3. View with QuickLook
This is an action script that allows you to quickly peek into the content of a selected Finder item without having to open the file. (download link)
4. iCalBirthdays
This is an action script that allows you to create a birthday calendar based on the contacts in your Address Book. What is different from the inbuilt birthday calendar is that you can set an alarm for each birthday and you can combine this action with other actions to publish your .ics file to a Web or file server. (download link)
5 – 9. Automator Actions For Web Designers
This is a pack of 5 Automator actions:
Save for Web
If you are like me, who have to constantly change image extension, resize image and rename image filename, then this application is a great tool for you. This Automator action can export images in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format either using Adobe Photoshop CS (for higher quality images) or Preview (for faster conversion) without having to open the application. There is also additional options that allow you to resize the image and sharpen the image after resizing.
This action script works as a plugin in your Finder so you can adjust your image with a single click.
Change Extensions
If you need to change a bunch of files extension from one form to another without changing the content of the files (say from html to php), this workflow is a handy tool for you. You can choose to change the file extension for all the files, selected files or all files that have no extension.
Make Names More Web-Friendly
This Automator action converts the names of the selected files to all lowercase, removes accents, changes spaces to underscores or dashes, and converts other special characters to underscores or dashes.
Create Symbolic Link
This Automator action creates a symbolic link for each of the selected files. A symbolic link is similar to an alias, except that many applications, including the Create Clean Archive action, will see only the file points to rather than the alias itself.
Create Clean Archive
This Automator action creates a clean zip format archive (.zip) that’s ready to share with others. Macintosh resource forks and desktop files will be ignored so they don’t get in the way on other operating systems. If you’re uploading the file online, use the action “Make Names Web-Friendly” afterward to ensure the archive has a web-friendly file name. Works great as a Finder plugin, so you can access it with a single click!
(download link)
10. Batch Rename
A workflow that grabs all the files in a specified folder and rename it to the way that you specified. A quick way to get things done if you want to rename a huge library of photos that you have taken during your holidays.
To use it as a plugin in Finder, simply copy and paste the file to
~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/
folder. (download link)11. Download URLs as PDF
Occasionally, you found a great website that provides great information that can solve your problem. Instead of bookmarking it down (because the website might change anytime), you can grab the URL and save it as a PDF file. You can then store it in your computer and use it for future reference. This action script allows you to download a URL as a PDF file. (download link)
12. Birthday Reminder
This is an alternative to the iCalBirthday application listed above. Instead of creating a birthday calendar, this application checks your Address book and announce to you the persons who are having birthdays on that day. This application is meant to run at startup for full effectiveness. (download link)
13. Photoshop Action Pack
![Workflows Workflows](https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?thumbnail=1200%2C630&quality=80&image_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogcdn.com%2Fwww.tuaw.com%2Fmedia%2F2007%2F12%2Fautomator.jpg&client=amp-blogside-v2&signature=38bb666775c7993a96f7bca826ca4289fce68b70)
This Automator application consists of 87 Actions for Photoshop CS and CS2 that allow you to control all of Photoshop’s major functions. In addition to the huge assortment of editing actions, the Action Pack includes sophisticated document filtering actions which let you process images based on many criteria including orientation, color mode, image size, file type, and more.
I have not tested this on Photoshop CS3. If you have tested it and find that it works too, do let me too. (download link)
14. Sync Folders
This is a action script that allows you to sync two folders. A handy tool for those who want to do backup of their projects. (download link)
15. Text to PDF converter
A simple utility for creating searchable PDF files from text documents. Simply drag-and-drop any kind of text document on the application icon to quickly convert it to PDF. You may also drag multiple documents at once, or even an entire folder. (download link)
16. FastApps
Fast Apps is a series of applications that allows you to perform some of the daily mundane tasks much easier and faster.
FastBackPic
This app allows you to easily set a photo from your iPhoto, Photo Booth shots and any other standard photo app (including Aperture) as the desktop wallpaper.
FastMusic
Quickly pick and play a song in iTunes.
FastPicImport
FastPicImport lets you select an image and imports it to iPhoto.
FastSongImport
Drag and drop your songs into this app to quickly import songs to iTunes.
FastWebPics
Grab the photos from the current webpage.
FastWebRSS
Quickly convert a website RSS feed into text.
(download link)
17. Simple Photo Editor
Easily apply effects to your image without the need of any external photo editing application. (download link)
18. Quick DMG
Ever wonder how you can create a .dmg archive? This automator application allows you to easily and quickly create your own .dmg archive. Simply drag all the files/folders to the icon to generate the archive. It integrates well with Growl to provide graphical notification so that you know when the building process starts and when it ends. (download link)
19. Movie to iPhone
This workflow takes a movie file, convert it to iPhone/iPod Touch format and import it into iTunes. Next time you sync your iPhone with your iTunes, the movie will automatically get transferred to your iPhone. There are several scripts for different usage pattern. You can use it as a Finder action, Folder action or as a standalone app. (download link)
20. Convert Images to Combined PDF
![Mac Automator Workflows Mac Automator Workflows](/uploads/1/2/5/0/125063395/918144291.jpg)
If you have a bunch of images that you want to email your friends, instead of attaching them as a zipped file, you can convert all of them into a single PDF file and send it to your friend. This workflow can be used as a Finder action. Simply select all the images and choose the Convert images to PDF option in the right-click contextual menu. (download link)
21. Flickr Upload
If you are one of those who upload photos to Flickr regularly, this Automator action script will be useful to you. You can easily add it to your workflow to upload a single photo or a whole batch. (download link)
Mac Automator Workflow Examples
22. Lock Desktop
This is a very simple yet useful application. You can use it to lock your desktop quickly and instantly. Whenever you need to get away from your Mac, simply double click on this application to lock your desktop. (download link)
23.Disc Burner
This app lets you burn files and folders to CD, fast and easy. Disc Burner burns files and folders to CDs in just a few clicks and without any external application. If you are using RW CDs, Disc Burner can also help you to erase the CD before burning your files. (download link)
Automator Mac Download
24. Sepialise Me
Easily and quickly add Sepial effect to your effect without the need for external photo editing application (download link)
Mac Automator Actions
There are plenty of free and useful Automator action scripts out there and the list covered here is only the tip of the iceberg. I will be keen to know what automator scripts you use and if you have any useful ones to recommend. Share with us in the comments.