Automation & Scripting

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Learn about scripting languages and automation frameworks available on the platform to automate repetitive tasks.

Automation & Scripting Documentation

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Auto Dial - 911
My app monitors users heart beats and if critical reading is noticed, it auto -dials 911 for emergency and ambulance help. I was under the impression that auto-dial may not be permitted or possible on the platform. Can anyone confirm and provide any additional guidance on if it is possible in the newer SDK/API stack or using any 3rd party service ? Thank you in advance!!
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Feb ’25
HomeKit Location issues when the First Person comes home
I want to create automations when the first person comes Home. When Setting up the Automation on the owner device everything seems to be correct. Yet the Automation doesn‘t Wort properly. my girlfriend is listed as admin. when she has a Look at the Automation, the Location of my phone is unknown. the issue is that this leads To the following behaviour. When i come House the Automation Checks if my girlfriend is Home. All Good. When my Grilfriend comes Home the Automation doesn‘t Check where i am But directly execut the Automation.
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Feb ’25
How to access comments and their associated text in iWork documents via AppleScript/ScriptingBridge?
Hi all, I’m developing a Mac OS application with XCode that interacts with iWork documents (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) using ScriptingBridge (and maybe AppleScript). Right now I started with Pages, assuming if it works for Pages, it will likely be similar for Numbers and Keynote. While I can successfully access and modify the main body text (e.g. the “body text” property in a Pages document), I’m having major difficulties accessing the comments (or annotations) within these documents. There are many aspects, but right now what I’m trying to achieve: For a Pages document, I need to scan the document and extract, for each comment: The content of the comment (i.e. the comment’s text). The text that is being commented on. For Numbers, similarly, I need to retrieve the commented cell’s content and the associated comment. For Keynote, the same as Pages, except I manage to get the Presenter Notes. Once done, I could replace the content accordingly. What I’ve tried: Using AppleScript commands such as: every comment of document "Test" Accessing properties like content or range of a comment. Attempting various syntaxes (including using class specifiers) to force AppleScript to recognize comments. Using ScriptingBridge in my Swift code, but I couldn’t find any mapping for a “comment” object in the Pages dictionary. However, all these attempts result in errors such as “cannot convert …” or “this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key …” which leads me to believe that the iWork scripting dictionaries may not expose comments (or annotations) in a scriptable way. Questions: Is there a supported way to access the comments (and the associated commented text) in an iWork document via AppleScript or ScriptingBridge? If so, what is the proper syntax or property name to use? (For example, should I be looking for a class named “comment”, “annotation”, or perhaps something else?) If direct access via AppleScript/ScriptingBridge is not possible, what alternative approaches would you recommend for programmatically extracting comment data from iWork documents? I apologize if my post isn't clear, it is translated from French. Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Feb ’25
struggling with app automation
hi so im trying to create a simple app that has two pressable buttons that turn a spa mode on and off wishing another app so far I have the UI figured out the app works the only issue is right now when I press spa on I have setup so it opens Siri Shortcuts and enables the shortcut is there a way to make the app revert back to mine after the action is done? or is there another way to open the other app and navigate to the button within that app and enable it behind my app
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385
Feb ’25
Automator error when running Watch Me Do-created script
Hi everyone, I'm trying to use Automator to batch process PDF files. I have hundreds of academic journal article PDFs whose page sizes vary from 5x7 inches to A4 format (8.27 x 11.69 inches). I want to scale all the PDFs to US Letter size (8.5 x 11.0 inches) such that smaller originals remain 100% scale but are centered on the larger page and larger originals are scaled down to fit the page. Manually opening a PDF in Preview.app, scaling it to US Letter paper, and using the Save as PDF option is producing the desired output for me. I captured my workflow using the Watch Me Do action in Automator, then adjusted it into the following AppleScript. -- a Get Specified Finder Items action to specify the input PDFs precedes this script on run {input, parameters} repeat with filePath in input -- Open the file in Preview tell application "Preview" open filePath activate end tell -- Give Preview some time to open the file delay 2.0 -- Press ⌘P set timeoutSeconds to 0.25 set uiScript to "keystroke \"p\" using command down" my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) -- Click the “Scale to Fit:” radio button. delay 2.0 set timeoutSeconds to 2.0 set uiScript to "click radio button \"Scale to Fit:\" of radio group 1 of group 1 of group 2 of scroll area 2 of splitter group 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process \"Preview\"" my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) -- Click the “<fill in title>” menu button. delay 4.0 set timeoutSeconds to 2.000000 set uiScript to "click menu button 1 of group 2 of splitter group 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process \"Preview\"" my doWithTimeout( uiScript, timeoutSeconds ) -- Save as PDF… delay 2.0 set timeoutSeconds to 2.0 set uiScript to "click menu item 2 of menu 1 of splitter group 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process \"Preview\"" my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) -- Click the “Save” button. delay 8.0 set timeoutSeconds to 2.0 set uiScript to "click UI Element \"Save\" of sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process \"Preview\"" my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) -- Press ⌘W to close the file delay 0.25 set timeoutSeconds to 2.0 set uiScript to "keystroke \"w\" using command down" my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) end repeat return input end run on doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds) set endDate to (current date) + timeoutSeconds repeat try run script "tell application \"System Events\" " & uiScript & " end tell" exit repeat on error errorMessage if ((current date) > endDate) then error "Can not " & uiScript end if end try end repeat end doWithTimeout My problem arises at the Save as PDF step. When this action runs, I see the PDF menu pop open: but the Save as PDF... menu item doesn't get clicked. Instead, I get an error: Can anyone advise on how to overcome this error?
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Feb ’25
Add the ability to remove/delete chats in the ChatGPT app using shortcuts
So Recently I’ve been making shortcuts and I noticed that I can prompt chatgpt with shortcuts to add extra functionality, I like this idea but there is 1 flaw with it and that is there is no ability to remove chats automatically, I suppose this would be fine except every time the shortcut is run it creates a new chat, usually I would have made it to remove the chat after the shortcut is finished, but since I can’t the chats would pile up as there is no way of getting rid of them automatically and it would be tedious to manually delete all the chats. also sorry if I chose the wrong topic and subtopic, I couldn’t find a topic about shortcuts
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Feb ’25
"Not authorized to send Apple events to Terminal
We are trying to open an application "xyz.app" It worked fine until 15.1.1 versions. But facing issues with 15.2 and 15.3 The application is working fine when we navigate to xyz.app/Contents/MacOS/ and run applet in this directory. But the error "Not authorized to send Apple events to Terminal" occurs when we are trying to open the app directly. We have tried with all the available solutions like giving full disk access to terminal and application, adding my application to automation in privacy and security tabs in settings. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
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Feb ’25
Check to make sure iTunes is playing - AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)
Hi folks, I've got some music that I want playing on iTunes all the time on an older system, but it'll sometimes stop. I tried making a Applescript to check and play the music/playlist again if it stops, but I keep getting a timeout error. This is the AppleScript: repeat tell application "iTunes" if player state is paused then tell application "iTunes" to play end if delay 30 end tell end repeat I get this error: AppleEvent timed out. iTunes got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712) I can't figure out why I'm getting a timeout error... anyone have any ideas?
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Feb ’25
AppleScript help
Hello everyone, I would like to use AppleScript to transform a .csv file. To make things easier to understand, I'm attaching two files: 1- The original file in csv format 2- The file as I'd like it to look after I've run it through the script. Here are the steps involved 1-Open the file in numbers (Note: the file is located in the download folder). 2-Delete the first 6 lines 3-Delete all font styles and cell colors 4-Combine all cells in the nature of operation column of the same operation belonging to the same date in the first cell of the operation, deleting all spaces in the text is not necessary for each operation. 5- Delete all empty lines. I hope I've made my request clear. If any of you have the knowledge to do this, if it can be done at all, I'd be very grateful for their help in writing the script. Thank you in advance. 1.csv 2.csv
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471
Feb ’25