Mac Productivity: 5 Tips for Locating and Launching Apps Faster

How often do you find yourself digging through your Dock, Launchpad, or Applications folder to find a certain app?  You've got other stuff to do.  How about making things a little easier, so you can get back to work.  Here are some tips to help you locate that elusive app and launch it a little more quickly. [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Set Desktop to Astronomy Picture of the Day

Each day, our good friends at NASA are kind enough to share a breathtaking photo of our wonderful universe.  Sometimes of the Earth, sometimes of the heavens, these photos showcase natural beauty that is surely Desktop-background worthy.  Here's how you can create an Automator workflow that runs each night to set your Desktop to the latest photo... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Implementing a Spoken Dictionary

A handy feature in Mac OS X is the ability to quickly and easily define words.  In most applications, just Control+click the desired word, and choose Look Up "TheSelectedWord" from the contextual menu to bring up the system-wide dictionary.  Even easier, if you've got a trackpad, just double-tap the word with three fingers to display its definition.  Automator lets you get even more creative.  You can expand these useful dictionary services with one that will read the definition to you.  Here's how you do it... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Creating Quick Notes

It's 9AM and your boss is on the phone.  She's rattling off important info you need for your 9:30AM conference call.  Quick!  You need somewhere to take notes.  Sure, you could use your email client - Mail and Outlbook both include note features.  Or, you could use on of the 50,000 note taking apps you've downloaded.  Better yet, why not use that handy Automator Service workflow you created?  You know, the one that automatically creates RTF notes into a Quick Notes folder, names them with the current date and time, and opens them in TextEdit so you can quickly begin typing?  You recall how easy it was to create.  Here's how you did it... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Print PDF to FTP Server

In Mac OS X, it’s a snap to convert almost any document to PDF.  From the print dialog, simply choose Save as PDF... from the PDF popup button.  If you’ve done this before, then you may have noticed there are some other options in this popup, as well, such as Mail PDF.  These are print plugins, and, using Automator, it’s possible to create your own and add them to the list.  Suppose you upload PDFs to your FTP server on a regular basis, so you can share them with your family, coworkers, or whoever.  Every time you do this, you have to save your document somewhere as a PDF, launch the popular FTP client Transmit, connect to the server, and upload the PDF.  This is a perfect time to create a custom print plugin to do this for you.  Here’s how... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts & Workflows – Scaling Images in the Finder

There are tons of apps that allow you to manipulate images on your Mac.  iPhoto and Preview are two from Apple, and there are lots more available from the Mac App Store and third-party software vendors.  What you may not know, however, is that you don’t need a third-party app to do some basic image manipulations with your existing operating system.  Using Automator, you can create your own custom image processing plug-ins, which you can run right within the Finder.  [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Clean Up Your Desktop with Your Voice

I tend to keep a pretty uncluttered Desktop. I typically have only a handful of active files there at any given time, which I promptly remove when I'm done working with them. I strongly suspect, however, that I'm in the minority. Often, I see people with hundreds or even thousands of files on their Desktop. They truly work off of their Desktop, and this simply isn’t efficient. Locating files on a cluttered Desktop requires scrolling through tons of irrelevant files, moving icons around, searching, and more. Perhaps if Siri was on the Mac, she could help. Wouldn’t it be great if you could verbally instruct your Mac to clean things up for you? Well, with Speakable Items and AppleScript, you can. Here's how. [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts and Workflows – Add Date to Files and Folders

Keeping files and folders organized on my Mac is essential to my productivity.  Folder structures and naming conventions are a big help, but I also need to ways to quickly locate meeting or phone call notes from last Tuesday, or the samples a client sent me for review last October.  One method I use is to add date prefixes to certain file and folder names.  This provides visual clues when I’m browsing for something, and also allows me to sort more easily.  While the methodology works, I don’t like having to keep typing the date over and over again.  Although it only takes a few seconds, it’s repetitive, and sometimes I enter a typo.  Since my time is extremely limited, those few seconds are also valuable to me.  To make life easier, I’ve created an Automator Service that appends a date prefix to files and folders in the Finder.  Here’s how you can do the same... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts & Workflows – Revealing File & Folder Paths

 In my last post, I explained how to create an Automator workflow that can quickly and easily copy file and folder paths to the clipboard.  Then, you can paste them into an email or document to share with others.  What if you’re on the receiving end, though?  How can you quickly and easily navigate to those files or folders?  Automator can help with that too.  Here are steps to build a Service workflow, which will reveal selected file or folder paths in an opened email or document... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]

Mac Productivity: Quick Scripts & Workflows – Sharing File & Folder Paths

 If you work in an office, the odds are good that you have shared locations for files and folders.  Your office might have a Projects share, for example, where you keep project folders and related files.

Suppose you need to direct your buddy John to a specific file in one of these project folders?  What’s the easiest way to do it?

Well, you could type out directions to the file, such as Company Projects > Active Projects > 2012 > March > Some Project > Some Folder > Some Other Folder > Some File.  Of course, this takes time.  A few seconds here and there doesn’t sound like a lot, but it all adds up.  There’s also a lot of back and forth, looking at the file and going back through its parent folders, trying to figure out its exact path.  It’s easy to make a mistake, typing a folder name incorrectly, making it difficult for John to follow your roadmap and find the file in question.  Maybe you could open up the folder in list view, expand the folders down to the file, take a screenshot, and email it to John?  What a hassle.  There has to be an easier way.

There is.  A simple Automator workflow can do the work for you, copying the paths of selected files and folders to the clipboard, so you can quickly and easily send them to John.  Here’s how you do it... [Read more on the Peachpit blog...]