Plain Text. Gadgets. Art. Geek. Speculation. Mac.
I have been experimenting with using the built-in Notes app on iOS and macOS lately. I’ve found some unique capabilities that make it a pretty interesting project management app, in particular the ability on macOS to add links to files from the Finder, as well as drag in links to email messages and setup names as mailto hyperlinks.
Continue reading “Project Management in Apple Notes”I don’t know how I stuck with the super annoying default notification sound for a successfully expanded Text Expander snippet for all these years, but I finally got around to finding a suitable and non-intrusive replacement.
Here’s the sound in .mp3 format, for previewing it; and the .aif sound file to download and drop into your ~/Library/Sounds/ folder (both are Dropbox links).
Notifications sounds on macOS have to be in .aif format, and it’s a bit convoluted to do it with iTunes.
So if you’ve been using my macOS tip to append a text file using Automator and shell scripts, you’ve no doubt run into two frustrations: the window is not brought to front focus, allowing immediate typing, and the OK button isn’t accessible via the keyboard (typing Return only inserts a line break, attempting to Tab to the button just inserts a tab character in the text field).
The OK button is a simple keyboard shortcut: the Function key (fn) + the Return key.
I’ve updated the above post to include the simple AppleScript step in Automator that will bring the window to front-most focus.
Here’s a simple AppleScript which can be used with a TextExpander snippet, or as a Service via the macOS Automator app, that when invoked will insert the title and URL of the frontmost Safari tab, formatted as a Markdown link. Continue reading “AppleScript to Insert Markdown Link for Current Safari Tab via TextExpander”
After working in the awesome Atom text editor for some time now, and getting spoiled with the awesome keyboard-focused text manipulation tools available, I wanted to find something for working in nvALT to solve a couple of tedious and incessant activities:
The first need is mostly for organizing information, primarily task/to-do lists.
The second is to bump completed tasks to the end of the text document.
Initially, I expected to find some sort of macOS Service I could assign a keyboard shortcut to. But then I stumbled across Brett Terpstra’s post on custom KeyBindings in macOS. Continue reading “Advanced Text Manipulation via Custom KeyBindings in macOS”
As a followup to my earlier post about how to create a macOS Service (or a Text Expander snippet) to quickly append a text file using Hazel, Automator and Shell Scripts, here’s a way to instead prepend text to a text file using the same tools.
My core interest in setting this up is for plain-text journaling. In a way, I am cobbling together the functionality I find extraordinarily useful in the iOS app Drafts for use on macOS.
I like to capture ideas, thoughts, errands, links, apps, articles, tasks and todos quickly, and I use a plain-text document system I’ve put together over the years. These automation setups remove friction in doing so, which make it more likely I will maintain the behavior.
With this setup and the companion append text automation setup, I can hit a keyboard combo, have a small window pop up where I type what I want to capture, hit OK and the automation goes and appends it to the right .txt file, in the right location, behind the scenes.
I will be writing about my plain-text journaling system in a future post. For now, read on to learn how to set this journaling automation up for yourself.
Continue reading “Prepend Text File with Automator & Shell Scripts”
If you, like me, use the weird symbols on your keyboard to help you sort files in the Finder, then you’ll be happy to find that I went through the trouble of not only naming a folder full of folders with top-row keyboard characters so you can see exactly how they sort, and then naming those folders so you know what key commands will produce them, but I also made it downloadable so you can just use it yourself. I put this folder on my Desktop for quick reference.
See here for a web table for every last keyboard character in alphabetical order.
Enjoy.
Here’s a method using Automator and Hazel to automatically create a specific folder structure within a folder. I use this for client projects, since they are always the same. With this setup, I just add a new folder to my “Clients” folder, and all the standard sub-folders I need added are auto-created by Hazel, via Automator. Continue reading “Automatically Create a Specific Folder Structure with Automator & Hazel”
An interesting method to use Mac OS X Services to Import Files into Evernote by Nine Boxes. Of particular note here is the AppleScript used in the post, which could easily be hijacked to use in conjunction with Hazel to automate the addiction by dropping files into a watched folder.
A simple but handy AppleScript to add files to Evernote. Excellent for use with Hazel. Includes syntax for choosing a specific notebook and adding tags.
The Overthinker 