MacOS – Activating screen saver from AppleScript in Mountain Lion

applescriptmacosscreensaver

I had a script that I used to use to activate my screen saver, and it no longer works in Mountain Lion.

It was a shell script that called an AppleScript script:

#!/bin/bash
osascript /Users/lorin/scripts/lockscreen.scpt

This is what the lockscreen.scpt file looks like:

tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" 
        activate 
end tell

If I bring up lockscreen.scpt in the AppleScript Editor, I get the "Choose Application" dialog popping up asking "Where is ScreenSaverEngine?"

Anybody know the Mountain Lion-y way to activate the screen saver?

Best Answer

That is a nice way of starting a random screen saver. If, however, you'd simply like to start the active screen saver, you can use this in Mountain Lion:

tell application "System Events" 
    start current screen saver
end tell

Related Solutions

MacOS – way to minimize open windows from the command line in OS X Lion

I agree that pretty much any solution you can get for the command line would have to rely on AppleScript. And your solution will work. However, rather than scripting System Events, which depends on UI events (actually moving your mouse and clicking) it's a much cleaner approach to script the application's window directly.

This way, if you move your mouse while the script is executing, it won't affect it. For minimizing all Firefox windows you could do something like:

tell application "Firefox" to set miniaturized of every window to true

The property is called miniaturized for Firefox and most OS X applications, but some third-party apps, like Google Chrome, call the property minimized, so if one doesn't work, the other should. This functionality is part of the Standard Suite that pretty much every AppleScript-able application has.

For applications that don't support AppleScript at all, you can fall back to your approach and use System Events to access the windows belonging to the application's specific process running on your machine.

If I were you, though, I'd try to rely on the application to minimize itself rather than through System Events where possible, as this will be much more reliable.

MacOS – Activating Mountain Lion screen saver from Applescript, part 2

On Mountain Lion (10.8)

This AppleScript will start the screen saver with the selected folder.

tell application "System Events"
    set ss to screen saver "iLifeSlideshows"
    start ss
end tell

Lion (10.7) and earlier

First select the appropriate sources/folders by clicking the Shuffle item in the screen savers list, then checking one or more items in the dialog that appears.

Then start the screen saver as as in the Mountain Lion section, but change iLifeSlideshows to screensaver.shuffle.

screen saver prefs