Easy way to save URL of a link to HD without opening link?

[Caelum]

I'm hoping to create an automator workflow that will delay downloading URLs that I specify until after a specified time in order to take advantage of my ISP's 120gb Off-Peak download limit upon which I almost never make a more than 5gb impression, while my peak downloads run almost to the (40gb) limit every time.

I don't want to pay for a schedule-capable download manager so please don't suggest that - and I'm yet to find a freeware app that does download scheduling - feel free to suggest one of those if you know of one!

Anyway, I'm going to use automator's 'Download URLs' action and specify that it download all the URLs in a particular folder on my hard drive, where I will (HOPEFULLY) save the URLs of things I want to download off-peak, then schedule iCal to run the workflow at the start of the off-peak session. Sounds good, yes?

I'm now looking for a simple, easy way to copy the links of things I want to download as .weblocs to my HD.

I know that you can drag-and-drop the URL of your open safari page onto your desktop/a folder and it will save as a webloc, but to do that means I have to open the links which will start downloading the file - not what I want. Same with Safari's 'save as' option - it needs the link to be open.

The contextual menu item 'Download linked file as' is close but not quite there. For a link which links directly to, say, a zip file, it simply opens a selection window for the location of the file and then saves it as a zip - it does not give me the option of saving it as a URL.

And, 'copy link' simply copies the text of the link. I could use it to create a text file full of the text of URLs but I wouldn't know how to get them to all be opened separately and downloaded from that.

If I knew how to use applescript I guess I would just try and write a new contextual menu item that did what I want, but I'm no scripter.

Any creative solutions? I get the feeling that I must be overlooking something obvious.

 

[GGJstudios]

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're trying to accomplish (it's late and my brain's tired), but here's an idea. If it doesn't apply, just ignore it. You could create a new bookmark folder and then for each link, just add each link to bookmarks. You'd end up with a folder of bookmarks that you could later "Open in Tabs". I hope that helps.

 

[Caelum]

Thanks for the suggestion ggjstudios, but I'm not sure that helps.

I need to save the links in a format that automator can open at a time I schedule (My off-peak starts a 3am so I'm unlikely to be awake to open them myself). I can save the links as bookmarks, yes, but there is no automator function to open a folder of Safari bookmarks and the bookmark folders created in Safari are not replicated by a series of folders on my HD accessible by Finder, so I cannot simply tell automator to open a particular folder full of links, because it doesn't exist.

But - thank you for trying to help! I think I may have explained things in a confusing way.