無聊日誌

Mac OS Service, Contextual Menu and Automator

31 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment

by 無聊達人 in Apple, Mac, OS X Tags: Automator, Contextual Menu, Lion, Mac OS X, Right-click, Services

If you don’t know this, certainly you would miss a lot from Mac OS! Some PC switchers would complain the lack of functions from Mac OS right-click contextual menu. One historical reason is Apple mouse originally designed with one button. Unlikely Windows, application menu bar in Mac OS is not tied to application window but always on top of the screen. (It becomes complaint if it has no gesture, who cares right click anymore?!) Also, with shortcut keys and now multi-touch gestures, I seldom find myself need to right-click or look for something from contextual menu.

Well, if you still want to, in fact Mac OS gives us even more in flexibility. It comes from a great feature called “Services” which existed long time ago. It was not well recognized or used because it’s hidden in menu bar before.
From Lion, it’s well located in System Preferecens -> Keyboard Shortcut. It worths you to take a look and enable some of the stuffs that you would like.

I found 2 great services that improve my life!
- Convert selected text/file to traditional/simplified Chinese
- New Terminal at Folder

“Automator” is another secret weapon from Mac OS. You can add more automations by combining tasks or AppleScript. Convert the action into contextual menu that’s fun!