BACKGROUND
An Automator script to save a screen-capture to a file was developed (by someone more clever than myself). For some reason it does not reliably (rarely) saves the screenshot to the file. Code is presented below.
The screen capture cursor consistently performs when called: the screenshot is captured to memory. In contrast, the screenshot is not consistently saved to the file as coded below
QUESTIONS
- How can the root cause of the save issue be diagnosed?
- Are there any obvious bugs in the code that cause the save issue?
- Is there a permissions issue? How to confirm / test?
CODE
on run {input, parameters}
-- # Screen Shot to Clipboard and File
-- # Clear the clipboard so the 'repeat until isReady ...' loop works properly.
set the clipboard to ""
-- # Copy picture of selected area to the clipboard, press: ⌃⇧⌘4
-- # Note that on my system I need to keystroke '$' instead of '4'.
-- # I assume this is because the 'shift' key is being pressed.
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "$" using {control down, shift down, command down}
end tell
-- # Wait while user makes the selection and releases the mouse or times out.
-- # Note that the time out also acts as an escape key press of sorts. In other
-- # words, if the user actually presses the escape key it has no effect on this
-- # script like it would if pressing the normal shortcut outside of the script.
-- #
-- # As coded, the time out is 5 seconds. Adjust 'or i is greater than 10' and or
-- # 'delay 0.5' as appropriate for your needs to set a different length time out.
-- # This means, as is, you have 5 seconds to select the area of the screen you
-- # want to capture and let go of the mouse button, otherwise it times out.
set i to 0
set isReady to false
repeat until isReady or i is greater than 10
delay 0.5
set i to i + 1
set cbInfo to (clipboard info) as string
if cbInfo contains "class PNGf" then
set isReady to true
end if
end repeat
if not isReady then
-- # User either pressed the Esc key or timed out waiting.
return -- # Exit the script without further processing.
end if
-- # Build out the screen shot path filename so its convention is of
-- # the default behavior when saving a screen shot to the Desktop.
set theDateTimeNow to (do shell script "date \"+%Y-%m-%d at %l.%M.%S %p\"")
set theFilename to "Screen Shot " & theDateTimeNow & ".png"
-- # set thePathFilename to POSIX path of (path to desktop folder as string) & theFilename
set thePathFilename to "/Users/user/Documents/Captures/" & theFilename
-- # Retrieve the PNG data from the clipboard and write it to a disk file.
set pngData to the clipboard as «class PNGf»
delay 0.5
try
set fileNumber to open for access thePathFilename with write permission
write pngData to fileNumber
close access fileNumber
on error eStr number eNum
try
close access fileNumber
end try
activate
display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with title "File I/O Error..." with icon caution
end try
-- # Hide the file extension as is the default.
-- # Convert the POSIX path filename to an alias.
set thePathFilename to POSIX file thePathFilename
set thePathFilename to thePathFilename as alias
tell application "Finder"
try
set extension hidden of thePathFilename to true
end try
end tell
return input
end run
Best Answer
For the benefit of other readers, it's worth noting that Finder has builtin keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to:
You can modify these shortcuts in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screen Shots.
I've put a suggestion in the comments about how to begin diagnosing the original script. But, as I would have written the script slightly differently if I wanted (for some reason) to avoid using the builtin Finder keyboard shortcuts, I went ahead and wrote it:
System info: AppleScript version: "2.7", system version: "10.13.4"
For one, the script is shorter, and shorter scripts provide fewer places where things can go wrong. Currently, this script works fine on my system. Therefore, you can try it on yours see if it works; if not, Script Editor will report where the errors are occurring and what they are, e.g. whether it is a file permissions error, etc.