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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AudioPlaybackIntent usage requesting a screen unlock
Hello, I have an AppIntent that uses the AudioPlaybackIntent to trigger my app to open and initiate an AVPlayer that plays back a media stream I control. When the phone is unlocked, everything works as I expect. The app opens and plays the audio. However, when the phone is locked, any attempt to invoke the intent causes a "Request Code" dialog to be displayed. This seems counter to what I would expect with the AudioPlaybackIntent usage. Am I able to accomplish what I'm after here with AppIntents? Does the fact that I'm using openAppWhenRun require me to have the phone unlocked somehow? import AppIntents import Foundation struct PlayStationAppIntent: AudioPlaybackIntent { static var title: LocalizedStringResource = "Play radio station" static var description: IntentDescription = .init("Play radio station") static var notification: Notification.Name = .init("playStation") static var openAppWhenRun: Bool = true init() {} func perform() async throws -> some IntentResult { AudioPlayerService.shared.play() return .result() } }
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120
Jul ’25
Terminal Command or AppleScript to Set Audio Balance to Perfect Center?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for a way to programmatically set the left/right audio balance to perfect center (50/50) using either a Terminal command or AppleScript. Background: The audio balance slider in System Settings > Sound > Output & Input works functionally, but I have difficulty determining when it's positioned at the exact center point. The visual nature of the slider makes it challenging for me to achieve the precision I need, and I end up adjusting it repeatedly trying to get it perfectly centered. What I'm looking for: A Terminal command that can set the audio balance to exact center An AppleScript that accomplishes the same thing Any other programmatic method to ensure perfect 50/50 balance I've tried searching through the defaults command documentation and Core Audio frameworks but haven't found the right approach yet. Has anyone successfully automated this setting before? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance, Dylan
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Jul ’25
Shortcuts: Expense Tracker Header Lines
Issue: CSV Headings Not Appearing in Shortcut-Generated File I'm using an iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 18.5 and the latest Shortcuts app to log expenses into a CSV file. The shortcut works fine, except the resulting file doesn't include the column headings. Here’s what I’ve done: Created a file called Expenses.csv with this single header line: Date,Price,Category,Store,Notes,Location Saved it to both /iCloud Drive and /iCloud Drive/Shortcuts (via iCloud on my Windows PC). My Shortcut builds the CSV line from inputs (date, price, category, etc.) and appends it to the file. I renamed the variables only in the final “Text” block, since renaming in earlier blocks seems no longer possible in this Shortcuts version. Despite this setup, the file doesn’t preserve the header row—it either doesn’t show up, or gets overwritten. Goal: Have a persistent CSV file with the correct headers once, and each new entry appended below the correct columns. Can anyone help me figure out what I’m doing wrong?
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262
Jul ’25
how to use a 3D short cut with the totally closed application
I'm soliciting you because I'm having a problem using the 3D short cut for my ios application in uikit in the AppDelegate file but it's impossible to redirect the route when the user has completely killed the application. It works as a background application. I'd like it to redirect to the searchPage search page when the application is fully closed and the user clicks on search with 3D touch. final class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate { lazy var window: UIWindow? = { return UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds) }() private let appDependencyContainer = Container() private let disposeBag = DisposeBag() var pendingDeeplink: String? private lazy var onboardingNavigationController: UINavigationController = { let navigationController = UINavigationController(nibName: nil, bundle: nil) navigationController.setNavigationBarHidden(true, animated: false) return navigationController }() private func handleShortcutItem(_ shortcutItem: UIApplicationShortcutItem) { guard let windowScene = UIApplication.shared.connectedScenes.first as? UIWindowScene, let window = windowScene.windows.first(where: { $0.isKeyWindow }), let rootVC = window.rootViewController else { DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 1.0) { [weak self] in self?.handleShortcutItem(shortcutItem) } return } if let presentedVC = rootVC.presentedViewController { presentedVC.dismiss(animated: !UIAccessibility.isReduceMotionEnabled) { [weak self] in self?.executeShortcutNavigation(shortcutItem) } } else { executeShortcutNavigation(shortcutItem) } } private func executeShortcutNavigation(_ shortcutItem: UIApplicationShortcutItem) { DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 0.1) { [weak self] in guard let self = self else { return } switch shortcutItem.type { case ShortcutType.searchAction.rawValue: self.mainRouter.drive(to: .searchPage(.show), origin: AppRoutingOrigin()) case ShortcutType.playAction.rawValue: self.mainRouter.drive(to: .live(channel: Channel(), appTabOrigin: AppTabOrigin.navigation.rawValue), origin: AppRoutingOrigin()) case ShortcutType.myListHistoryAction.rawValue: self.mainRouter.drive(to: .myList(.history), origin: AppRoutingOrigin()) default: break } } } What I've tried: Adding delays with DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter Checking for window availability and rootViewController Dismissing presented view controllers before navigation Environment: iOS 15+ Swift 6 Using custom router system (mainRouter) App supports both SwiftUI and UIKit Questions: What's the best practice for handling shortcuts on cold launch vs warm launch? How can I ensure the router is properly initialized before navigation?
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Jul ’25
AppleScript
Here's my AppleScript: tell application "Finder" activate open application file "Messages.app" of folder "Applications" of folder "System" of startup disk end tell I just need the step to send the message making the script automatically send the message which has already been created. This step opens the completed iMessage ready to send . I want to send it without and keyboard usage. All that is needed is the step to send
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2w
UI Testing and 'Allow Paste'
I am developing an app that allows the user to ask it to process the clipboard contents and do something with it. In developing a XC UI Test, I find the app stops while it waits for the user to give permission. That breaks the automation. I tried: let springboard = XCUIApplication(bundleIdentifier: "com.apple.springboard") let allowButton = springboard.buttons["Allow Paste"] But that does not work. Is there a way to tell the framework to automatically give the test permission to access the Paste clipboard (or to allow me to write tests to grant this)?
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2w
Best Approach for Monitoring Music Playback State Across Multiple Apps?
Hey Swift community! I'm exploring building a macOS app that needs to monitor what's currently playing in music apps like Spotify and Apple Music (track info, playback position, play/pause state). I'm trying to figure out the most efficient architecture before diving in. The Goal: Monitor playback state across multiple music players to react to changes in real-time, ideally with minimal CPU overhead since this would run continuously in the background. Approaches I'm Considering AppleScript / ScriptingBridge Distributed Notifications Native Frameworks (Apple Music only) What's the recommended way to do this on macOS? Are distributed notifications reliable enough to avoid polling entirely? Is there a performance difference between AppleScript and ScriptingBridge for IPC? For Apple Music specifically, should I use MusicKit, MediaPlayer, or stick with AppleScript? Are there other approaches I'm missing?
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AppIntents EntityPropertyQuery, how does "Filter Entity where" work?
When you correctly implement EntityPropertyQuery on an AppEntity, Shortcuts will expose a "Find Entity" action that calls into entities(matching:mode:sortedBy:limit:). This is demoed in the "Dive into App Intents" session and works as expected. However, with this action, you can change the "All Entity" input to a list variable which changes the action text from "Find All Entity" to "Filter Entity where" still giving you the same filter, sort and limit options. This appears to work as expected too. But, what's unexpected is that this filter action does not appear to call any method on my AppEntity code. It doesn't call entities(matching:mode:sortedBy:limit:). One would think there would need to be a filter(entities:matching:mode:sortedBy:limit:) to implement this functionality. But Shortcut just seems to do it all on it's own. I'm mostly wondering, how is this even working? Here's some example code: import AppIntents let books = [ BookEntity(id: 0, title: "A Family Affair"), BookEntity(id: 1, title: "Atlas of the Heart"), BookEntity(id: 2, title: "Atomic Habits"), BookEntity(id: 3, title: "Memphis"), BookEntity(id: 4, title: "Run Rose Run"), BookEntity(id: 5, title: "The Maid"), BookEntity(id: 6, title: "The Match"), BookEntity(id: 7, title: "Where the Crawdads Sing"), ] struct BookEntity: AppEntity, Identifiable { static var typeDisplayRepresentation: TypeDisplayRepresentation = "Book" var displayRepresentation: DisplayRepresentation { DisplayRepresentation(title: "\(title)") } static var defaultQuery = BookQuery() var id: Int @Property(title: "Title") var title: String init(id: Int, title: String) { self.id = id self.title = title } } struct BookQuery: EntityQuery { func entities(for identifiers: [Int]) async throws -> [BookEntity] { return identifiers.map { id in books[id] } } } extension BookQuery: EntityPropertyQuery { static var properties = QueryProperties { Property(\BookEntity.$title) { EqualToComparator { str in { book in book.title == str } } ContainsComparator { str in { book in book.title.contains(str) } } } } static var sortingOptions = SortingOptions { SortableBy(\BookEntity.$title) } func entities( matching comparators: [(BookEntity) -> Bool], mode: ComparatorMode, sortedBy: [Sort<BookEntity>], limit: Int? ) async throws -> [BookEntity] { books.filter { book in comparators.allSatisfy { comparator in comparator(book) } } } } The example Shortcut first invokes entities(matching:mode:sortedBy:limit:) with comparators=[], sortedBy=[], limit=nil to fetch all Book entities. Next the filter step correctly applies the title contains filter but never calls entities(matching:mode:sortedBy:limit:) or even the body of the ContainsComparator. But the output is correctly filtered.
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1.6k
Jul ’25
Shortcut to Send Address to Tesla Navigation
Hi, new to this forum. Recently discovered how to share a location in Maps app with my Tesla to automatically start navigating. How cool is that! Being the nerd that I am, I wrote a shortcut to select a contact and share it's address with my Tesla. That way, I don't leave the Maps app in memory to use up my battery, and don't have to go to all the trouble of swiping Maps out of memory. JK. Anyway, when I share the shortcut-selected address with the Tesla, it says "Error this content could not be shared". To me this means the address as shared by the shortcut is not in the same format as when you share it directly from Maps. So the question is, how can I send a properly formatted location from my shortcut? Thanks...
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6d
Not authorized to send Apple events to Microsoft Excel
I have created swift command line project and i have added logic to executing apple script using NSAppleScript. That will launch Microsoft Excel file I am launching this swift command line executable from java using process launch. 3)This is not prompting me. It is throwing exception "Not authorized to send Apple events to Microsoft Excel." I have already tried out this option Added info.plist with NSAppleEventsUsageDescription Added entitlement with com.apple.security.automation.apple-events to true In packages i have selected this entitlement i have select the bundle identifier , team and signing certificate "Development" and automatically manage signing. can you please suggest what could i missed ?
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605
Dec ’24
Help with app automation permissions
Hi, I am trying to make an app that uses Spotify's web API to play songs. For the web API to work, Spotify needs to be running, and my Mac has to be recognized as an active device. For my Mac to be recognized as an active device, I have to play a song for a very short amount of time (under a second). I want to make my app automatically do that on launch. I already wrote the AppleScript in Automator, and it worked. It successfully launched Spotify, played a song for 0.5 seconds, then hid itself. After writing the code, I tried to implement it into my app to run on startup, but I ran into a problem. The app only started the Spotify app on my mac, and gave me an error that told me it wasn't running. What do I do? Is this an issue with the permissions of the app, or something else? I have given the app the "Apple Events" entitlement. This is the error I am getting. Note that the app opens Spotify, after which it gives me this. Error: { NSAppleScriptErrorAppName = Spotify; NSAppleScriptErrorBriefMessage = "Application isn\U2019t running."; NSAppleScriptErrorMessage = "Spotify got an error: Application isn\U2019t running."; NSAppleScriptErrorNumber = "-600"; NSAppleScriptErrorRange = "NSRange: {31, 8}"; } This is the function I am trying to use to do the actions with Spotify: func runAppleScript() { let appleScript = """ tell application "Spotify" activate if player state is not playing then play track "spotify:track:5XSKC4d0y0DfcGbvDOiL93" delay 1 pause end if end tell tell application "System Events" tell process "Spotify" set frontmost to true delay 1 keystroke "h" using {command down} end tell end tell """ var error: NSDictionary? if let scriptObject = NSAppleScript(source: appleScript) { scriptObject.executeAndReturnError(&error) } if let error = error { print("Error: \(error)") } } Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
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417
Jan ’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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366
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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453
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 “&lt;fill in title&gt;” 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\" " &amp; uiScript &amp; " end tell" exit repeat on error errorMessage if ((current date) &gt; endDate) then error "Can not " &amp; 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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394
Feb ’25