Let your Mac do repetitive tasks for you. What about archiving or backing up your important files? If so, you can create a custom workflow, add the actions you want, and have your Mac do the work for you. To create a new workflow, choose File New, click Workflow, then click Choose. The Automator workflow below does just that, by taking items placed into a specific folder and backing them up onto another drive. Create a new folder, and name it something like “Auto Backup”. On another drive, create a new folder and name it “Backed Up”, for example. Launch Automator, and select “Calendar Alarm”. MacOS’s Automator is a little-known but highly useful piece of bundled software. Designed to bring software automation to non-programmers, Automator workflows use a simple grammar that will be familiar to any user of IFTTT.
You can easily batch convert images from one format to another on your Mac. If you convert a lot of images often, Automator can help make that easier and faster to accomplish.
Automator is a useful utility Apple has included in their operating system since Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It allows you to easily automate repetitive tasks. You create workflows using a drag and drop interface to stack actions on top of each other, like puzzle pieces, until you have included all the steps needed for your task.
Today we’re going to show you how to use Automator to create an app that will make it very quick and easy to batch convert images.
Create New Document in Automator to Batch Convert Images
Step 1: Open Automator (Automator.app) from the Applications folder. On the dialog box that displays, click New Document.
Step 2: In the Choose a type for your document section of the dialog box that displays, click Application. Then, click Choose.
You can also create a workflow that you can run from within Automator. However, for this task, we need to create an app that we can add to the dock.
Create the Workflow
On the main Automator window, there are two primary sections. Actions and variables are on the left and the workflow is on the right. To build an Automator action, you drag actions and variables from the left into the workflow on the right in a sequential order. You’re basically telling Automator what to do with the files we provide it step by step using the workflow.
Step 1: First, we’re going to tell Automator to create a special folder in which to put the converted image files. Select Files & Folders under Library in the first column. Then, select New Folder in the second column and drag it to the workflow on the right.
Step 2: The New Folder action is added to the workflow. You need to give the new folder a name, so type a descriptive name, such as “Convert PNG to JPG“, in the Name box. You can choose where to create this folder from the Where drop-down list. The Desktop is the default choice and we’re going to accept that choice.
Step 3: The next step is to tell Automator to select the images. To do this, make sure Files & Folders is selected in the left column. Then, select Get Folder Contents in the right column and drag it to the workflow below the New Folder box.
Step 4: Now, you need to tell Automator to convert the images you give it. Select Photos in the left column. Then, select Change Type of Images in the right column and drag it to the bottom of the workflow.
Step 5: A dialog box displays asking if you’d like to add a Copy Finder Items action so the copies are changed and your originals are preserved. We don’t need to do this because we’ve already told Automator to create a new folder into which copies of the original files will be placed. The original files will not be modified. So, click Don’t Add.
Step 6: On the Change Type of Images box in the workflow, you must select to which type of images you want to convert your files. Select the type from the To Type drop-down list. We’re converting our images to JPEG, so we select that.
Save Your Automator Workflow to Batch Convert Images
Step 1: Now it’s time to save your Automator workflow as an app. Go to File > Save.
Step 2: On the Save As dialog box, enter a name for the Automator app file in the Save As box.
To select a different location for the Automator file, select a folder from the Where drop-down list, or click the down arrow button to the right of the Save As box to access the full Save As dialog box, which we show in the next step.
If you want to use the currently selected location in the Where box, click the Save button now. Otherwise, see the next step.
Step 3: If you clicked the down arrow button to access the full Save As dialog box, use the panels in the middle of the dialog box to navigate to the folder in which you want to save your Automator app file. Make sure the file name is what you want in the Save As box at the top. Click Save.
Close Automator
Step 1: To close Automator, go to Automator > Quit Automator.
Add Automator App to Dock
Step 1: Once you finish creating your new Automator app, add it to the dock for easy access. To do this, open a Finder window and navigate to the folder in which you saved your Automator app file. Drag the .app file to the dock.
Use Your New Automator Add to Batch Convert Images
Step 1: Now, it’s time to use your Automator app to batch convert images. Open a Finder window and select as many images as you want to convert. Drag the selected image files onto the Automator app icon you added to the dock.
Step 2: Depending on the number and size of the images and the speed of your Mac, you’ll see a new folder created on your desktop with the name you specified in the New Folder box in the Automator workflow.
Step 3: The new folder contains copies of all the images you selected, converted to JPEG (or the format you selected).
What kind of apps or workflows have you created with Automator? Let us know in the comments.
I meet a lot of people with Automator anxiety: they think using OS X’s built-in workflow-maker is a lot more complex than it really is. The truth is that Automator workflows are (a) pretty simple to assemble and (b) great for simple but repetitive tasks that you do all the time anyway.
To show you what I mean here are five workflows that I think pretty much every Mac user should have. They do things we all need to do: Wrap text in quotation marks, for example, or count the number of words in a selection of text. There might be other ways of doing the same things, but Automator is built into your Mac and you can implement them yourself for free in a couple of minutes.
Wrap text in quotes
This one works with selected text to wrap it in quotation marks.
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To start, create a new Automator Service workflow and configure its header area to process selected text in any application. Click the Output Replaces Selected Text checkbox so the result of the workflow—the wrapped text—will be inserted in place of your selection.
Although Automator includes a number of actions for working with text, it doesn’t have one for adding a prefix or a suffix. As a workaround, you’ll need to use AppleScript for this. So, add the Run AppleScript action to the workflow, and copy-and-paste in the following script, which simply adds quotation marks around any text input it receives:
Save the finished workflow as Text > Wrap in Quotes and you’re done.
The next time you’re ready to wrap some text in quotation marks, just Control- or right-click the selection and choose Text > Wrap in Quotes. Oracle client odbc driver. (You could also choose the workflow from the Application > Services menu.)
Mac Automator DownloadCount words of selected text
Another one for working with selected text, this one gives you a quick word count.
Create a new Automator Service workflow and set it to process selected text in any application. Leave the Output Replaces Selected Text checkbox unchecked.
Automator doesn’t have any built-in actions for counting words. So, again, you’ll have to add the Run AppleScript action to the workflow, and enter the following:
Save the workflow as Text > Display Word Count. Next time you want to know the length of some text, just select it and run the workflow from the Services menu.
Create subfolder
Although it would be super useful, OS X still lacks a handy Add Subfolder command in the Finder. Sure, you can open a folder first, and then create another folder inside of it, but that’s one more step than necessary.
Mac Automator Workflows Free
Create a new Automator Service workflow and set it to process folders in Finder.
Find the Set Value of Variable action and add it to the workflow. Then, from its popup menu, create a new variable and name it
Folder .
After that, add the New Folder action to the workflow. Enter a name of
Subfolder or whatever else you prefer. Drag the folder variable from the Variable area at the bottom of the workflow to the Where popup. Finally, with the action selected, choose Action > Ignore Input from the menu bar. This is important because the New Folder action copies anything it receives as input into the new folder, and you don’t want this to happen. By setting the action to ignore its input, you bypass this behavior.
Save the workflow as Folder > Create Subfolder. The workflow should now appear under Services in the Finder’s contextual menu when you Control or right-click on a folder. Just select a folder and then the service.
Mac Automator ScriptsAdd date to filesAutomator Mac Download
This one adds a current date prefix to the names of any selected files or folders.
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Create a new Automator Service workflow and set it to process files or folders in Finder. Find the Rename Finder Items action and drag it to the workflow. If Automator prompts you to insert a Copy Finder Items action first to preserve your originals, click Don’t Add; you’re just adding a prefix to the names of the files, not deleting them or anything serious like that.
Configure the action to Add Date or Time. Then set the Date/Time popup to Current, the Format popup to Year Month Day, the Where popup to Before name, the first Separator popup to Dash, the second Separator popup to Space, and click the Use Leading Zeros checkbox. While all of this sounds kind of complicated, it’s really just telling Automator you want the date prefix in YYYY-MM-DD format.
Lastly, save the workflow as Files and Folder > Add Date Prefix. Your workflow now shows up in the Finder’s Services menu when you Control- or right-click on something. Select a file or folder, then select the service, and the date will be prepended.
Toggle hidden files
Sometimes it helps to see hidden system files; this one toggles their visibility on and off.
Start by creating a new Automator Application workflow. Automator doesn’t have an action for toggling on and off the visibility of hidden files, so again you’ll need to use AppleScript to do it. Actually, this AppleScript really just triggers a bunch of Unix commands to update the Finder’s preferences to show hidden files and then relaunch the Finder. Add the Run AppleScript action to your workflow, and enter the following:
(When you copy and paste, make sure that the first line, beginning 'if' and ending 'then', and the sixth, beginning 'do' and ending 'as string' are each a single line, with no hard returns in the middle.) Just save the workflow as Finder > Toggle Hidden Files. That done, if you double-click that app, your Finder will disappear for a second, then reappear with hidden files showing or hidden (depending on their state before you launched the app). (And be careful with those hidden files: They usually do important stuff, and deleting or renaming them could get you into trouble.)
Have any trouble following along, or get stuck somewhere? Don’t worry, you can download an archive containing the complete workflow .
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