Looking for Advice on How to Use Automations and Shortcuts to Improve My Mac Workflow

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Hello Everyone,

I’m reaching out in hopes of gathering some insights on how to optimize my workflow using macOS automations and shortcuts. Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to improve my productivity and streamline my daily tasks on my Mac, but I feel like there are still so many untapped features in macOS that could help me save time and work more efficiently.

So far, I’ve been using Automator and Shortcuts to automate some simple tasks, like renaming files in bulk, creating reminders, and managing app windows. But I know there’s a lot more I could be doing to integrate tasks across different apps and services. I’ve seen people mention things like automating workflows between Alfred, Hazel, Keyboard Maestro, and the native macOS shortcuts, but I haven’t quite been able to figure out how to tie everything together in a cohesive way.

I’d love to hear from others who have optimized their Macs in similar ways—what tools, apps, and workflows have been game changers for you? Are there any specific macOS automation tips or Shortcuts that you’ve found incredibly useful in your everyday routine? I’m also curious to know how you balance automation with flexibility, as I don’t want to get too bogged down in rigid processes.

Lastly, if anyone has any recommendations on useful automation resources or forums where I can learn more, I’d greatly appreciate it.

I also checked this: https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/an-applescript-way-to-create-keyboard-maestro-macros-to-implement-macsparkys-move-to-shortcuts/looker

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and learning from your experiences!

Thanks in advance!

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Listen to the most recent MPU episode if you haven’t already.

Start by determining what you already do a lot of.

Downloading/saving files?

  • Default Folder X allows you to specify rules for where those sorts of things go, but it just pre-selects it - you can always change it up. It also allows you to save “favorites” or look at your most recently used folders. That, by itself, saves me a bunch of time.
  • Hazel allows you to monitor folders and take actions. I take a number of screenshots, so I have it set to monitor my desktop and move any screenshots older than an hour into an archive folder. You can do the same thing for downloads.

Re-typing the same text?

  • Typinator / TextExpander / Keyboard Maestro allow you to replace typed text strings with other text. The first two are more focused tools, with Keyboard Maestro being a much fancier automation tool that can be used for the same purpose.

Performing repetitive actions?

  • I wanted to download the individual videos for one of the Field Guides I purchased from David. I set up Keyboard Maestro to click through the videos and download them individually as it went.

Make lists of what your challenges are, and post back either here or on the Automators forum (https://talk.automators.fm). :slight_smile:

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There are a lot of different ways of doing similar automation tasks.

First thing is to understand how you work with automation. Are you going to continue to do incremental changes and improvements, or prefer “set it and forget it” tools?

I think the biggest decision is how much complexity/versatility versus simplicity do you want?

You can end up with a lot of different tools if always chasing the “hero” or “best of breed” solution for a specific function versus less tools that do a lot, but not always the easiest or with every bell and whistle.

Personal example: For many years, I used TextExpander for keyboard macro expansion. I also use Keyboard Maestro, but not for macro expansion.

After TE went to a subscription model, I decided to stop using TE and re-implement all my text expansion macro’s using Keyboard Maestro.

Actually not for the reason you might think, the subscription cost, but because I had a few TE macros that used onscreen prompts and based in the user input, generated different text output.

I found the TE user interface for editing this kind of macro to be not just inconvenient, but way too klunky and unproductive.

So I bit the bullet and learned how to do text expansion using Keyboard Maestro. It was harder to grok and do the same things, but much more flexible and allowed me to do a lot more.

So the end result is one less tool, initially harder to use, but in the end a better result.

Conversely, I don’t like Keyboard Maestro for window layouts because it is pixel based. So I do use a separate application, Moom, for most of my window layouts because in this case a separate, focused app is easier and more productive for me.

So basically, no easy path. Just a lot of trial and error to figure out the right combination for yourslf.

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My favorite Mac automation strategy (via @MacSparky ) is to create a kind of dashboard for each Mac app using Keyboard Maestro’s conflict palette. You just assign a bunch of useful app specific automations to a specific app with the same keyboard shortcut. When you type the shortcut, Keyboard Maestro presents a menu of these automations.

I do this for Things, OmniOutliner, Devonthink, Mail, and Safari. I generally use the shortcut cmd-shift-letter - with letter being the first letter of the app. In Things, for example, I can quickly jump to a certain view - “tasks tagged ‘active’ and ‘work’” or “projects tagged ‘personal’” or “tasks with deadlines”.

Links for details

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As I’m sure you know, things you do repeatedly are candidates for automation.

My main automation is something I run every morning and it is something I’ve built up over time, and continue to tweak.

I use Bunch to set up working contexts. My Morning bunch launches the following apps when run:

  • Mail
  • Safari
  • Music
  • NetNewsWire
  • Messages
  • Calendar
  • OmniFocus
  • Carrot Weather
  • Sidebar
  • Cork
  • MacUpdater

For Safari it opens three tabs, one each for APOD, XKCD, and CoCoRaHS sites.

Now if all these apps opened in the same space, even for me with four monitors, it would be a bit of a mess. So I have ten spaces and the apps are opened in specific spaces. And I use Keyboard Maestro and Moom to position windows automatically across the monitors (I use Bunch to switch between spaces).

The bunch file also includes a simple AppleScript telling Music to play my morning playlist.

Another AppleScript turns on the power to my work Windows laptop, but only if it is a weekday (it provides power to a hub, which powers up the laptop). The power is turned on (and later off when the Bunch is run at the end of the day) by running a Shortcut which toggles a smart outlet set up in Apple Home. Other smart outlets are toggled via Shortcuts to turn on/off my desktop speakers (for zoom calls and such) and my stereo receiver (for Music).

I trigger the Morning Bunch by pressing a button I’ve configured on my ‘bunch of buttons device’. And while the Stream Deck is all the rage, and could be used for this, I use the app Touch Portal running on my original iPad Air, which otherwise would be in a closest or worse a landfill.

I could use the same Touch Portal button to shut everything down by running the Morning Bunch a second time, but I use Alfred and the Cluster workflow for this. Running a bunch file launches everything, running it a second time closes everything.

I fire off the Morning Bunch, go get my coffee, and return to my desk with everything ready to start my day.

The Automators podcast (2018-2024 RIP) is a good source of info. Look through the archive of episodes to find those on tools you are interested in. There are forums for Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Alfred, BetterTouchTool, and a number of other automation tools. Similar to this forum, the Automators podcast has an associated forum (as noted by @webwalrus above) which is still up and running.

Most of my automations are little things. I recently set up a Keyboard Maestro macro that watches for when I open AppCleaner and then:

  • Opens the Applications folder
  • Calls Moom to position the AppCleaner and Applications folder directory windows.

So watch for where you do the same things in a sequence, like always opening App2 when you open App1. Your bio notes that you are a developer. So if you always open your IDE, terminal client, GIT client, project folder, etc., look for ways to launch one thing and have the others tag along, and have the windows set as you like, and start up your background coding music, and set a focus mode, and turn on the lights, and …

… have fun experimenting.

And welcome to the forum.

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Thanks for pointing out Cluster. I created my own Alfred-workflows to open and close bunches but this is a nice addition.