How to drop a file onto a GUI app from command line

bashcommand line

I've got a tool to normalize WAV audio files, but it only works by dragging and dropping the file either onto the GUI or onto its dock's icon.

As far as I know the app doesn't have any option to pass from command line, so I was wondering whether there is a way to pass the file from a terminal in order to use it in a bash script.

Best Answer

Generally this is equivalent to dragging a file onto an app's icon:

open -a Your_WAV_Tool.app /path_to/your_file.wav

You can use the complete path to your app if it isn't in an expected place.

Related Solutions

MacOS – your preferred way to start a (shell) script from the GUI

You can use an app like Platypus.

Platypus is a developer tool for creating application wrappers around scripts. In other words, it creates Mac OS X applications that execute a script which is bundled within the application. Command line scripts can thus be run transparently from the graphical window environment, integrating seamlessly with the user interface.

MacOS – Display dialog from command line (like xmessage does)

One option is to tell a background process like SystemUIServer to display the dialog:

osascript -e 'tell application "SystemUIServer"
display dialog "message"
end
activate application (path to frontmost application as text)'

You can also tell the frontmost application to display a dialog, but it's not shown immediately if the application is not responding. If MPlayer OS X is frontmost, text dialogs don't accept any keyboard input.

osascript -e 'tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
display dialog "message"
end'

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – your preferred way to start a (shell) script from the GUI

MacOS – Display dialog from command line (like xmessage does)

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