10.6's Service Menu, Where are the smart services?

[jaw04005]

Clearly, I'm missing something. On Apple's Snow Leopard Web site they show the new services menu which is supposed to make additional services available that are relevant to your current selection and application.

However, I can't seem to activate it in the GM build. Any ideas?

From Apple's Snow Leopard Web Site:

The right service at the right time.
"The Services menu in Mac OS X lets you use features of one application while working in another. In Snow Leopard, services are more simplified, streamlined, and helpful. The Services menu is contextual, so it shows just the services appropriate for the application you’re using or content you’re viewing rather than all available services. You can access services with a right click of your mouse or Control-click of your trackpad. You can configure the menu to show only the services you want, and you can even create your own services using Automator."​

I've managed to find where you turn on the additional services. It's located in the Keyboard preference pane under the "Keyboard Shortcuts" section. From a usability standpoint, I'm not sure why Apple chose to place them here. As the contextual menu is not really a keyboard shortcut, but I digress.

One of the services included in the screenshot can be turned on within this menu, "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track." However, once turned on it doesn't have an icon beside it like the screenshot shows. Additionally, I can't figure out how to enable the "Make New Mail Note" service.

By the way, as far as I can tell these smart services are not even mentioned in the built-in help. I found out how to enable them by reading an old article about Snow Leopard from a random blog.

Has anyone had any luck enabling them? To be frank, this is disappointing as there's no way the average Mac user is going to find them buried in keyboard shortcuts. It's just not useful like this. And why doesn't the icon appear like the example?

 

[inviso]

i searched the same and came to your post accidently...

you find what you're looking for in the service menu

i think that context menu links come in a next version....

 

[jaw04005]

Yeah. Although that's not as convenient as having the services within the contextual menu.

Apparently, no one else cares. Heh.

Edit: It looks like Macworld found the bug too and reported it to Apple. Apparently, Apple is working on a fix.

 

[macinsanity]

Yeah. Although that's not as convenient as having the services within the contextual menu.

Apparently, no one else cares. Heh.

Edit: It looks like Macworld found the bug too and reported it to Apple. Apparently, Apple is working on a fix.

Yay Macworld! I can't use Wake on Demand over Airport on my 2007 Santa Rosa Macbook which was my most highly anticipated feature. Now contextual services don't work as advertised. This was my second most anticipated feature.

 

[xanatos]

I use automator stuff all the time to convert songs to mp3 or rotate and resize.now its all gone on the right click?
So theres no way to get it back?

 

[goMac]

Yay Macworld! I can't use Wake on Demand over Airport on my 2007 Santa Rosa Macbook which was my most highly anticipated feature. Now contextual services don't work as advertised. This was my second most anticipated feature.

I'm pretty sure the 2007 Macbook hardware doesn't support wake over airport... Only wake over ethernet.

 

[jaw04005]

Apple has since removed the above screenshot. Apparently, the lack of default services in the contextual menu and the missing application icons were by design.

Whatever, Apple.

In other news, Sal Soghoian, the Automator/Services/Applescript product manager for Apple, and Alex Lindsay have posted three in-depth video tutorials describing the full capabilities of the new services and contextual services menus.

http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak

He suggest manually grouping your services by naming them like "Audio · Encode to iTunes Format" for the contextual menu. Of course, Apple's original way with the application icon would have been a lot more intuitive.

Sal has also posted a bunch of stuff (and additional services and automator actions) over at http://www.macosxautomation.com/ .

 

[macinsanity]

Apple has since removed the above screenshot. Apparently, the lack of default services in the contextual menu and the missing application icons were by design.

Double plus ungood. The Ministry of strikes again.

 

[cmaier]

I use automator stuff all the time to convert songs to mp3 or rotate and resize.now its all gone on the right click?
So theres no way to get it back?

Sure there is. Go to Automator, and do "new," then choose "service." You can drag your actions from your old automator stuff if you want, but you'll want to remove the "get selected files in finder" type stuff - as you'll see, there's a new built-in first step. When you create services, they appear in the right click contextual menu. I've created many of these and they work fine. They appear at the bottom of the menu; no more "more."