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Another question - I've looked before for any documentation on building tools for Mac, and can't really figure out anything besides "run this xyz app to trigger

• lelandfe 4y ago
  scriptingosx[0] is a great resource, here's a simple Swift command line tool they wrote that might be a good reference: https://github.com/scriptingosx/desktoppr https://github.com/scriptingosx/desktoppr [0] https://scriptingosx.com/ https://scriptingosx.com/
• philsnow 4y ago
  Would Hammerspoon fit your use case? It lets you write lua to interact with all kinds of system APIs. It's roughly the first thing I install on a new mac.
• bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  If you want to put together keyboard-shortcut-triggered automations on a Mac without any third party software, I think you have to create an automator service and then assign it a shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Services. I know you asked about Swift, but... If you're ok with third party software, I would recommend keyboard maestro. In addition to triggers (keyboard-based and others), it offers a pretty high level API over the macOS automation stuff you'd typically hack together with AppleScript, such as "activate app", "bring window at index i to front", "simulate keystroke", "insert text", "move the mouse to x,y relative to Element", "run JS in frontmost browser tab", etc. And that's only roughly 5% of what it can do. With keyboard maestro I don't see much point in writing one's own native automation apps. The APIs it exposes are just as powerful as what you could write yourself and a heck of a lot easier to use.