Mac – Looking for a tool for creating or editing file and folder bookmarks (finder aliases)

aliasmac

I created a bookmark / Alias (via finder) for an smb share after mounting it. That's quite fine and working for me at it's best. It automatically mounts the smb store when acessing the alias and I can browse into the share without huddle.

But: Other users are not very familar with it and would be pleased to get such a link pre-installed.
The problem is, that my bookmark automatically contains personal information (username in SMB:// URI and in some cases personalized path names for the share.

I'm not able to edit this (binary) mac bookmark file in vim and it includes lots of unreadable information.

The question is:
Is there any tool that will allow editing such a Mac System Alias (Bookmark) file so I can create presets for other users?
You aren't able to edit this in Finder natively nor through any text editor.

Best Answer

Rather than attempting to edit an alias directly, you could look at making a tool that creates the alias for the user.

Using Automator you could create an application that uses the following built in actions:

  1. Ask for Text
  2. Connect to Servers
  3. New Aliases

And when the app is run, the following would happen:

  1. The user would be asked for the server address (you could pre-populate a default answer for this).
  2. The share point would be mounted. A dialog would pop up asking for the users login credentials, which could then be stored in the keychain (more secure than having these details contained within the tool itself).
  3. An alias would be created at a specified location, e.g. the Desktop.

You would then save this as an application and share it with your users.

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