MacOS – How to write a script that opens a notification

applescriptmacosnotificationsscript

Is there an apple script that can click on the notification for me so that I don't have to open the app using a mouse?

I plan to bind this script to a keyboard shortcut and that way I can open incoming notifications with just the keyboard.

Here are two notifications type examples

Note that scripts like this wont work because it attempts to click on a button and there's no consistent button to click on to open a notification. Sometimes its top, sometimes its bottom, sometimes its neither.

What is needed is a script that clicks on the "left" part of the notification, that will always open the app.

Best Answer

Testing under macOS High Sierra, the following line of example AppleScript code, when run, had the following general effects on a notification:

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click every window of application process "Notification Center"

Open the app for which the notification was from, if it wasn't already opened.
If the app was already open, it would set focus to the app.
If notification from multiple apps, the app on the top notification in the list gets opened/focus, additions apps get opened, if not already open.

Note that with some notifications, they will be dismissed; however, with others, the app will still be opened/focused as applicable but the notification will not be dismissed. These will need to be replied to appropriately.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Does Notification Center have keyboard shortcuts

There is a configurable keyboard shortcut to open Notification Center:

Other than that, there seems to be no way to configure any keyboard shortcuts. The closest I could get is discovering that you can set Notification Center as the action for a hot corner. If you wanted to do this when a key is pressed, you can try combining this with AppleScript (like in this post).

Quickly create/edit keyboard shortcuts for menu items

Here's the AppleScript for it:

on run

tell application "System Events"
    set theActiveApp to name of 1st process whose frontmost is true
end tell

set theApplicationID to id of application theActiveApp
set theMenuItem to text returned of (display dialog "Enter menu item name" default answer "Example: New Window")
set theShortcut to text returned of (display dialog "Enter shortcut (use these: ⌘=@,  ⌥=~,  ⇧=$,  ^=^)" default answer "Example: @$1")

do shell script "defaults write " & quoted form of theApplicationID & " NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add " & quoted form of (quote & theMenuItem & quote) & " " & quoted form of (quote & theShortcut & quote)

end run

So, it gets the current application's identifier and then adds your menu item name and shortcut as required. You can even click the application's menu bar without the popup going away!

However, note that this is merely a rudimentary version of what you wanted; it only adds entries. If you make a mistake, that's yours to manually fix (and it might not appear in System Preferences). Also, lastly, it did not seem to work in Automator or Script Editor, but worked fine for the Finder. As for the former two, it adds the entries but for some reason they don't show up in System Preferences and can't be used, even after restarting the app. I don't know why but hey, at least it's something ;)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Does Notification Center have keyboard shortcuts

Quickly create/edit keyboard shortcuts for menu items

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