this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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macOS Automator is really cool: Add a custom action that works in all apps (such as sort lines in selected text) (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/apple_enthusiast
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I was looking for a way to sort a selection of text lines (specifically in Xcode, which doesn't have a builtin way to do this) today. Thinking this wasn't possible at all and I'd have to use another editor (such as BBEdit which has a menu entry for this), I looked it up online.

And what do I find: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8104750

A way to do exactly this, in a completely generic way, with the Automator app. Allows you to run any program over selected text in any application, plus of course other Automator actions. Super cool, both for the user of course and also for app developers because they don't need to take the effort replicating features like this in every single app that is text editor adjacent.

I definitely need to look into Automator more.

Rant:

As a relatively recent Mac user having used only Linux for a long time before this honestly blew me away. This level of integration is unthinkable under Linux until now, and people usually point to this kind of thing being "impossible" as a reason for using the terminal extensively as opposed to graphical programs. But no, turns out, it is completely possible if your graphical environment has a solid foundation and isn't just a hodgepodge of mostly questionable UI toolkits (not you, Qt Widgets) with the only common interface being "you can open a window and get a framebuffer to draw on".

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, I have some Python scripts that reflow selected passages of code for me using this approach. It always feels so weird when I'm using some OS that seemingly doesn't support any sort of GUI scripting.

It's worth noting that while you can simulate mouse clicks and key strokes within any app, some support a few direct scripting commands. For example, in Terminal, you don't need a GUI script to open a new window and type in it to run some command. You can just issue an AppleScript command to tell app "Terminal" to do script "top" or whatever. That's because Terminal's scripting library includes a do script command.

For more on this, you can fire up Script Editor and go Open Dictionary. You will see a list of all apps with any sort of scripting support and be able to get documentation on what you can do with it.