What's automator??

[iFanaddic]

What is automator? I just can't figure it out thanks for the help.

 

[rychencop]

you and me both. i have tried to use it, but could never figure exactly what to do with it. i believe it's used to make repetitive task easier to execute.

 

[Lurchdubious]

I've been curious about this as well. Never cared enough to look at the "Help" tho.

 

[Lurchdubious]

Ok, I just spent a couple minutes learning about it via Help. Interesting program, but I can't think of anything I'd use it for. Does anyone have an example of using this program? Like what you do with it?

 

[aaquib]

It's basically a robot. It'll complete predetermined tasks. For example, I recorded myself encoding a video, and then let Automator repeat it 100 times or the other videos in the set while I watch an episode of The Office.

 

[iFanaddic]

It's basically a robot. It'll complete predetermined tasks. For example, I recorded myself encoding a video, and then let Automator repeat it 100 times or the other videos in the set while I watch an episode of The Office.

I don't quite get it yet.. Any other example? Anyone?

 

[iknowyourider]

What is automator? I just can't figure it out thanks for the help.

Sounds like TowMater's brother. Maybe he was the truck that hauled the red race car. NR, JK

 

[Clancycoop]

I used it

The other night we were setting up my wife's new phone (Sony Ericsson W350) and she wanted some pictures on it. All of the photos of us that I have taken with my D40x are too high res for here tiny little phone screen, so I had her make a folder of the pics she wanted and automator (after making a workflow) resized each one to a suitable size and and put the new one in a new folder.

 

[mkelly]

I don't quite get it yet.. Any other example? Anyone?

Here's a step-by-step example of how to use Automator to build a nice script to join a bunch of PDF files together into one big PDF. Comes in handy at work:

1. Open Automator
2. Choose Custom workflow
3. Click Files & Folders and then choose "Ask for Finder Items" - drag this to the workflow space on the right side of the window. Click "Allow multiple selection" checkbox in this action.
4. Click PDFs action (left side of the window)
5. Drag "Combine PDF Pages" to right-side workflow (under the Ask for Finder Items action you already placed there)
6. Click Files & Folders action (left side of window)
7. Drag "Move Finder Items" to workflow space on right-side of window, under the "Combine PDF Pages" action that you placed there earlier.

What you've just done is wired together the OS X Finder and Preview to combine multiple PDF documents together into a new, single document. If you click "Run" in the top right-hand corner of Automator, it will ask you to select files in the Finder ... If you have a bunch of PDFs, try selecting them (you can select multiple files by holding down the command key).

Click "Choose", and Automator will then combine the PDFs into a single document and then dump it on your Desktop. If this is something you do frequently (as I do for work), you can save this workflow and call it up anytime you like.

This is a *very* simple example. If you browse through the various actions you can see all kinds of potential. I've also used Automator workflows to resize huge numbers of images, or convert images from one format to another.

Automator is also extensible - as you add programs to your Mac you'll find that new Automator actions become available.

Hope that gives you a better idea of how to use it.