MacOS – Automator app with a menubar icon

applescriptautomatormacosmenu bar

I've created an application with Automator.

I want to have a new icon in the menubar like this:

enter image description here

Which starts the app when I click on it.

Is it possible? (without using Xcode)

PS: I don't want a menubar launcher.

Best Answer

An Alternative is to use the Applescript.app Script menu.

Shown selected here in the menu bar

enter image description here

This menu is normally for easy access to Applescript scripts and will list and run them from the menu.

But a quick test shows that that it can also run Automator workflows.

To get the menu you need to open Applescript Editor.app which can be found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder: /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor.app

Once open go to it Preferences and under the General Tab check:

"Show Script menu in menu bar"

enter image description here

You may want to uncheck "Show Computer Scripts"

You can now quit Applescript.app and the Applescript menu should be in the Menu Bar.

Now you select the Applescript Menu and it will have a sub menu "Open Scripts folder" to take you to the folder where you can place your workflows.

Select the "Open Script folders" and then it's sub menu "Open Users Scripts folder menu to take you to the folder where you can place your workflows.

enter image description here

A Finder window will open into the Users Scripts folder. You can now place your .workflow file inside it.

The Applescript Menu is dynamic. So Each time you select it it scans its folders to see what is in them and populates the menu accordingly.

Your .workflow files should show up there. The Menu name will be the name of the file.

enter image description here

Selecting the Menu for your workflow will run it.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Creating Hotkey to Open a Menubar App

You can assign a shortcut to a script like this:

ignoring application responses
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "QuickHue"
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
    end tell
end ignoring

There is a bug where clicking some status menu items causes scripts to be blocked for about 5 seconds. One workaround is to terminate System Events after the click command:

launch application "System Events"
delay 0.2
ignoring application responses
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Time Tracker"
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2
    end tell
end ignoring
do shell script "killall System\\ Events"
delay 0.1
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Time Tracker"
    tell menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2
        click menu item 2 of menu 1
    end tell
end tell

The first two lines are needed when System Events is not already running. System Events supports sudden termination, so it should be safe to even send it a KILL signal.

MacOS – Removing an icon from Mac OS X menubar when Cmd+Drag won’t work

If it is opened at login, check login items in the Users & Groups preference pane, {~,}/Library/Launch{Daemons,Agents}/, or /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.501/overrides.plist.

You could also try opening Activity Monitor and quitting all processes that seem suspicious.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Creating Hotkey to Open a Menubar App

MacOS – Removing an icon from Mac OS X menubar when Cmd+Drag won’t work

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