This is a much talked about, but hardly used tool. At least I haven’t come across many users reaping the benefits of Automator. Personally speaking I haven’t used it all that much, since I don’t really have that many tasks to automate. Even the new ‘watch me do’ feature of Leopard’s Automator was a big failure. Having said that there are times when Automator does come in handy, and the easy way of creating new workflows is very tempting.
Basics
Using automator is simple. You can either start with certain ‘starting points’ or just create a blank workflow. Let’s create a simple workflow that will prompt you to select a bunch of files in Finder, compress them into an archive, and create a new email message with the file attached.
First we need to specify which files we want to archive. Search for “Ask for Finder Items” in the actions pane, and drag that action into the workflow area on the right. The options for the action are pretty straightforward. I’d suggest checking the ‘Allow Multiple Section’ box since we’re talking about multiple files here.
Next drag in the ‘Create Archive’ action. You don’t need to touch any actions here. Third, you need a ‘New Mail Message’ action, without which you cannot pass on a file to Mail. And lastly, ‘Add Attachments to Front Message’. Now run the action and it should work just as advertised.
Using Automator Workflows
Sure you can run a workflow from Automator itself, but where’s the fun in that! You can run automator workflows in two ways. You can save the workflow as an application, in which case it will run without the Automator window, as a self contained process.
You can also use it as a folder contextual menu plugin. Navigate to your ~Homefolder/Library and create a folder “Workflows” if not present already. Inside that create another folder “Finder”. Now copy your workflow into the newly created Finder folder. Now whenever you’re browsing through anything in Finder, simply right click » More » Automator » and select your action. But wait, that action we made above isn’t really optimised for running as a contextual workflow, as it will still ask you for files to archive. Go back into Automator and replace the “Ask for Finder Items” with “Get selected Finder items”. This will run the workflow with any items you’ve selected in Finder.
Expanding Automator
You can expand Automator by adding custom Applescript scripts or download actions from websites like automatorworld.com or Apple.com/downloads. You can even download entire workflows for your use. Here are some cool ones that will definitely come in handy.
Save for Web
Uses Preview or, if available, the Photoshop Save for Web engine to batch save files optimised for the web. Great for when you want to publish a bunch of photos to your blog but don’t want to go along saving them one at a time.
Batch Rename
Instead of getting a special renaming utility, you can use this workflow to do various things like append words to filenames or completely rename them.
Sync Folders (Action)
This action allows you to specify a source folder and clone that over to a destination folder. You could for instance source your projects folder, and clone it over on a folder on your flash drive. The action will make a perfect clone, thereby deleting any files from the destination folder, and even copying over corrupted data, so use the action only when you’re sure of it.
Movie to iPhone
Excellent workflow if you’re not using a dedicated media encoder. It will either ask for media or get selected media, depending on which of the 4 different files you’re using.
Export to Flickr (Action)
Installing this action will allow you to add a ‘export to flickr’ action at the end of any workflow. Very easy to use and supports tags, visibility, descriptions and more.
Force Quit All Apps
My personal favourite. Sometimes I just need to shut down my Mac, but it’s either Mail or one of the Adobe apps that just refuse to quit. This little app will force quit everything.
Anyone use Automator on a regular basis? Some neat tricks perhaps?
