Automating Offline — Older Mac Automation Tools

As mentioned in my earlier essay: after suffering major internet outage where I live, it’s made me realise just how dependent I am and I assume many people are on being online.

I covered how for tools we want things that work installed locally and offline. This also is where your Bullet Journal/paper based systems come in handy, and they’re even more robust as they’re guarded against power failure too.

This should also apply to anything you want automated that you also want control over locally or at least be able to access.

There are actually many more automation solutions on the Mac compared to Windows, at least as far as easier to use and set up. I covered Shortcuts but being available only on newer Macs you may want to know how to use older Macs stuck on older versions of the OS.

Automator. Automator is the precursor to the newer Shortcuts for Mac automation tool. With this in mind Shortcuts is backwards compatible with Automator automations so anything you create won’t be lost work when you eventually upgrade. Automator is the original automation tool for Mac so may come across as a little old in its looks but it’s very powerful and at this point more capable in many ways than Shortcuts. As with Shortcuts you set up triggers and actions choosing from lists of options of either built in offerings or from anything that compatible apps you have installed have included for automation.

As with Shortcuts you can also run scripts leaving the possibilities pretty much endless, it could be Applescript scripts which in themselves are very flexible or any programming language, script or app that can run on your Mac.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog