Crafting a customized phrase depend service — Erica Sadun


I simply occurred to wish to do loads of phrase counts at present so I put collectively a service to make my life simpler. Whereas, I carried out my preliminary work on Mojave however the identical strategy works all the way in which to Large Sur and, presumably, the upcoming macOS Malibu Barbie.

Open Automator

To get began, launch automator and create a brand new doc.

Choose Fast Motion, Select from the brand new doc dialog:

Add Scripting

Drop in a Run Shell Script after which an Apple Script. You may search from them within the top-left nook. Drag them so as into the suitable panel.

I used /bin/bash for my shell script, stunning, I do know, as I’m well-known for my love of all issues csh. Be happy to make use of no matter shell fits you. The primary non-argument shell variable ($1 right here) corresponds to highlighted textual content, which can be utilized by the system contextual menu:

echo `echo $1 | wc -w` phrases. `echo $1 | wc -c` characters.

Swap the pop-up for piping output (“passing enter”) from “to stdin” to “as arguments”. This enables the AppleScript to learn the chosen information and current a dialog. Should you neglect, you’ll get empty enter and one thing like “1 phrases, 0 characters” on a regular basis.

on run {enter, parameters}
    show dialog enter as string buttons {"OK"}
finish run

Save and Run

Save the motion. I referred to as mine “Phrase Rely”.

The motion mechanically saves to ~/Library/Providers, in case you need to discover or delete it sooner or later.

% ls
Phrase Rely.workflow/

Your new fast motion mechanically provides a customized service to your contextual pop-ups. Simply spotlight something you need to depend, from textual content on an internet web page to your work in a doc and open the contextual menu:

Be certain the output seems affordable. For best testing, copy the textual content to your clipboard after which use wc straight in terminal.

And, then increase, you’re performed.

Let me know if this was useful.

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