Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Use Services for System-wide Shortcuts
In OS X, a
service
is a special, context-sensitive program that can operate almost anywhere.
You can find services on the Services submenu of the application menu (that is, the menu
with the current application's name). Or, right-click (or Control-click) something and choose
a service from the very bottom of the contextual menu. (Services appear on a Services
submenu
of the contextual menu if more than four of them are active and applicable to
whatever you selected.)
Ifyoulookat this menu in different apps, and with different things selected, you'll notice that
your choices change. For example, you'll see one set of commands when you select a file in
the Finder, a different set when you select text in Mail, and yet another set when you have a
graphic open in Preview. That's because each service is designed to operate only on certain
kinds of data, or in certain contexts. The idea is to show you only the commands that are
relevant to what you're currently doing.
Services, like Automator workflows and AppleScripts (discussed later in this chapter), can
perform complex tasks for you with only one click. So they're fantastic automation tools that
every Mac user should be aware of. As we'll see in a moment, you can use a combination
of built-in services, third-party services, and services you create yourself to automate a wide
variety of activities.
Before you do anything else, you should configure the services on your Mac to your taste. Not
all the services installed on your Mac are necessarily active (only active services appear in
the Services submenu); you can enable or disable services as you wish. In addition, you can
assign a keyboard shortcut to any service to avoid hunting for it in a hard-to-reach submenu.
To set up Services on your Mac:
1. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services (
Figure 32
).
