Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
without having to open System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop and adding
it there manually. In addition, some apps install their own services.
Beyond what comes with OS X and the apps you already have, there are a great many free
services you can download that are extremely useful. For instance:
• The
Download Services
page at Mac OS X Automation has dozens of services
for images, email, movies, PDFs, Web browsing, and other contexts.
• DEVONtechnologies'
Needful Things
page includes three services: BlueService
(for sending text to a Bluetooth device), CalcService (for performing
calculations on text selections), and my favorite, WordService (which includes
numerous commands for reformatting and manipulating text).
•
Markdown Service Tools
from Brett Terpstra help you format text using the
popular Markdown syntax.
• Matt Sephton's
Services
page has a variety of useful services.
• Waffle Software makes a tool called
ThisService
that helps developers create
their own services. A number of developers who use that tool have submitted
their own
services
to Waffle's site, where you can freely download them. Note,
however, that not all of these work under Mavericks.
Once you've downloaded a service, move or copy it into
/Library/Services
(to make it
available to all users) or
~/Library/Services
(to make it available only to you). Then
go back to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Preferences to enable the specific
commands you want to use and assign or change keyboard shortcuts.
But wait, there's more! You can create your very own service, without any programming at
all, using Automator, which I discuss next. (For instructions, see the sidebar
Create Your
Own Service
).
Tip:
To learn more about services, visit the
Services
portion of the Mac OS X
Automation site.
Understand Automator
Automator is an easy-to-use technology, included as part of OS X, for bundling actions into
sequences known as
workflows
. If programming (even the simplified version in AppleScript)
gives you the willies, Automator is nothing to fear. You don't have to learn a new language or
write in code—just drag things into a list, fill in some blanks, and check some boxes.
