- Mac Open App On File From Within Spotlight Download
- How To Spotlight Search Mac
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- Mac Open App On File From Within Spotlight Free
See files recently used in an app: Enter the app’s name (don’t press the Return key unless you want to open the app). To open a file, double-click it in the preview. Make a desktop shortcut to an item: Drag the item from the results list to the desktop; just click it on the desktop to open the item in the appropriate app, such as Safari. 12 Mac search tips from a Spotlight addict. Spotlight is surprisingly powerful and flexible. Learn the many things your Mac's search tool can do with this collection of shortcuts, tips and tricks. Microsoft has been working on a macOS Spotlight-like search tool for Windows 10. The tool is designed to replace the existing Win + R experience and it includes options to quickly search apps.
This business with dmg's and.app file and where.app files go and how they get there is totally befuddling to me on the mac. In particular until you were kind enough to explain this in a way i understood i have been at a complete loss as to why i get a prompt as to whether i really want to start and application that has been downloaded from. A lot of shortcuts work on the app switcher as well. CMD +, = Spotlight Preferences. = clear spotlight search. CMD + R = Reveals file in Finder. CMD + T = Opens in new tab. CMD + T = Opens. CMD + K = Opens search term in Wikipedia. CMD + X = Clears spotlight CUT (I omitted common command like copy and paste and will omit.
Basically, a Mac application has a
.app
extension, but it’s not really a file — it’s a package. You can view the application’s contents by navigating to it in the Finder, right-clicking it and then choosing “Show Package Contents”.The internal folder structure may vary between apps, but you can be sure that every Mac app will have a
Contents
folder with a MacOS
subfolder in it. Inside the MacOS
directory, there’s an extension-less file with the exact same name as the app itself. This file can be anything really, but in its simplest form it’s a shell script. As it turns out, this folder/file structure is all it takes to create a functional app!![Within Within](/uploads/1/3/4/2/134298560/208282529.jpeg)
Enter appify
After this discovery, Thomas Aylott came up with a clever “appify” script that allows you to easily create Mac apps from shell scripts. The code looks like this:
Installing and using appify is pretty straightforward if you’re used to working with UNIX. (I’m not, so I had to figure this out.) Here’s how to install it:
- Save the script to a directory in your
PATH
and name itappify
(no extension). I chose to put it in/usr/local/bin
, which requires root privileges. - Fire up Terminal.app and enter
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/appify
to make appify executable without root privileges.
After that, you can create apps based on any shell script simply by launching Terminal.app and entering something like this:
Obviously, this would create a stand-alone application named
Your App Name.app
that executes the your-shell-script.sh
script.After that, you can very easily add a custom icon to the app if you want to.
Adding a custom app icon
- Create an
.icns
file or a 512×512 PNG image with the icon you want, and copy it to the clipboard (⌘ + C). (Alternatively, copy it from an existing app as described in steps 2 and 3.) - Right-click the
.app
file of which you want to change the icon and select “Get Info” (or select the file and press ⌘ + I). - Select the app icon in the top left corner by clicking it once. It will get a subtle blue outline if you did it right.
- Now hit ⌘ + V (paste) to overwrite the default icon with the new one.
Note that this will work for any file or folder, not just
.app
files.Examples
Chrome/Chromium bootstrappers
I like to run Chrome/Chromium with some command-line switches or flags enabled. On Windows, you can create a shortcut and set the parameters you want in its properties; on a Mac, you’ll need to launch it from the command line every time. Well, not anymore :)
Mac Open App On File From Within Spotlight Download
The
&
at the end is not a typo; it is there to make sure Chromium is launched in a separate thread. Without the &
, Chromium would exit as soon as you quit Terminal.app.How To Spotlight Search Mac
![How How](/uploads/1/3/4/2/134298560/515981883.png)
Launch a local web server from a directory
Mac Open App On File From Within Spotlight Without
Say you’re working on a project and you want to debug it from a web server. The following shell script will use Python to launch a local web server from a specific directory and open the index page in your default browser of choice. After appifying it, you won’t even need to open the terminal for it anymore.
More?
Mac Open App On File From Within Spotlight Free
Needless to say, the possibilities are endless. Just to give another example, you could very easily create an app that minifies all JavaScript and CSS files in a specific folder. Got any nice ideas? Let me know by leaving a comment!