Use Automator to perform everyday tasks automatically
Being a Mac power user is all about getting the most out of your machine and leaving yourself with ample time to really get creative and be more productive than ever before. While you might have already upgraded some of your apps to make your creative projects a little easier and quicker to work with, there’s still the matter of those dull housekeeping tasks to deal with.
Whether it’s clearing out your Downloads folder, resizing those holiday photos ready to upload online or grabbing some text from a PDF document that needs editing and reformatting, all of these seemingly menial tasks can take a chunk of time out of your day. Fortunately, all of these can be performed by Automator, reducing your input down to just a couple of clicks.
Automator is incredibly powerful, not only does it complete all of the tasks we’ve mentioned above in seconds, but it can also be used to make fully fledged apps. If it sounds like your thing, then read on to find out exactly how to construct your own Automator workflows
Extract PDF text
This workflow takes PDF files selected in Finder, combines them and extracts the text to a Rich Text document – it’s perfect for emailing instructions from PDFs which would otherwise be too large to send. This should be saved as a service for access from Finder’s Services menu.
Batch convert movies for your iPhone
If you’re off on holiday and want to convert some of your movies for playback on your iOS devices, setting up this quick Automator script is the easiest way to do it. Save it as an application and it’ll prompt you to select your films, convert them and save them all automatically.
Quickly crop images
By setting up an Automator service to copy and crop images, you can save yourself a lot of time when it comes to creating things like Facebook cover photos or any other image which has to be a specific size – be sure to have Automator copy the files so the process is non-destructive.
Organise your Downloads folder
By setting up this Automator workflow as a Calendar alert, you can set it to activate periodically. This particular workflow checks your downloads for music, imports to iTunes and adds the songs to a ‘to be sorted’ playlist then deletes the original source photos.
Setting up an Automator workflow
1: Choose your workflow
Hit Command+N to create a new workflow and choose a workflow type. The most common are Application and Service.
2: Drag an action
To construct your workflow, simply drag an action from the browser on the left into the workflow on the right.
3: Select your variables
Each action you import will contain options. Select these to customise your workflow and hit the Run button to test.
4: Save it out
When you’re happy with your workflow, hit Command+S to save it. Give it a name and save to your Applications folder.
