Tag Archives: Keyboard Shortcuts

Enter the Mac Users Giveaway through Oct. 15, 2012 for a chance at prizes like a scanner, iTunes gift cards, books, Mac software, and Alfred’s Powerpack!

Enter the Mac Users Giveaway between now and October 15th for a chance to receive one of many awesome prizes, including scanners, iTunes gift cards, books and eBooks, and great Mac software!

Alfred Logo
You probably know I’m a fan of Alfred — an app which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to accelerate and automate tasks on your Mac.

The free version of Alfred lets you launch apps with shortcuts, get quick access to web searches and bookmarks, and perform actions with music, email, and files/folders with a simple pop-up display. I think it’s a massively useful addition to any Mac user’s life and I’ve found that the husband and wife development team behind Alfred are engaged and responsive to their users, actively acting on their feedback and suggestions.1

The Powerpack

But the deeper power of Alfred to change how you work isn’t unleashed until you purchase the Powerpack. The Powerpack adds a whole host of cool stuff into the mix (look here for a partial list) but, no surprise I’m sure, the coolest parts to me are the scripting and hotkey related functions.

Where Alfred really distinguishes itself, though, is how makes easy it make it to share these recipes with other people. Over the long haul, I think that it’s critical to helping people get up to speed with the whole concept of “Keyboard Launcher Apps” and that why I’ve begun building Alfred Extensions that people can download.

Win a Powerpack

Running with Crayons, the developers of Alfred, have generously donated a Powerpack (normally £15 / about US$25) to the prize pool so that one lucky winner can see what I’m talking about for themselves! Go to the Mac Users Giveaway and fill out a short survey to begin!

  1. May not matter to some but, in a small attempt to make this world more of a meritocracy, I choose to give my money to people like the Pepperrells. [↩]

Two Methods To Use AppleScripts Faster Through Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re interested in learning more about AppleScript, be sure to check out the AppleScript and Automator Resources Page. It’s filled with links to books, videos, tools, and websites that’ll help you get started!
-Justin.

A reader sent me a message because she was having a hard time setting up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript. She wasn’t a new Mac user by any stretch — in fact, she’s a tech professional! So I went back and re-read my own previous descriptions of how to assign a keyboard shortcut to a script.

Looking at it with fresh eyes, I realized that I could do better… and that it was important to do so. Proper use of keyboard shortcuts can have a massively positive impact on making your computer a lot easier to use!

In the same way, AppleScripts are designed to speed up the way you use your Mac. When people understand how they can use both scripts and shortcuts together — invoking complex actions with the same ease as cutting-and-pasting inside a document — they tend to become really enthusiastic about using them. For a “utility script” that you only use occasionally, it’s no problem to manually run it. But for the scripts you want to use repeatedly throughout the day, keyboard shortcuts aren’t just desirable — they’re essential!

So let’s take another pass at this and walk through two ways you can set up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript.

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