I recently switched to Mac OS X as my primary desktop operating system after spending over a decade on Linux. Although Apple’s operating system supplies practically all of the command line tools I ...

Last week I showed you how to use Automator to make a workflow that took photos from your Mac with an iSight and sent them to your Apple TV. That how-to featured one way of using a variable in ...

Automator's great for streamlining some of the repetitive things you do each day on your Mac. With Automator, you can create your own custom plugins for the Services menu, Folder Action workflows that ...

Since Apple is introducing Shortcuts to macOS Monterey in the fall, it may be worth backing up all of your Automator workflows before it lands. Here's how to make a copy of your automations. Shortcuts ...

In this hands-on tutorial, Ars will show you how to use Automator to build platform services that incorporate shell scripting.

For today’s tip, I’m going to show you how to use Automator to write a very simple backup utility—you’ll be able to compress and copy a given folder with a single mouse click. While not an ideal ...

If you stay a lot of time away from your Macbook but you’ve always wanted to control what’s happening to your Mac while you’re not there, this tutorial is aimed at you. Today I’ll teach you how you ...

It doesn't have to be difficult to make your Mac automatically perform repetitive or tedious tasks for you. Apple's free Automator app on every Mac has a plethora of functions that take one step to ...

A few weeks ago, while I was preparing my coverage of Apple’s Q2 2013 earnings call, I grew tired of my system to resize and rename images on OS X, so I rebuilt it from scratch using Automator, Name ...

Take a look at any of Apple's promotional material for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and you'll find that a feature that consistently gets a top-billing is Automator. However, I suspect that, if you could ...

When we posted on Friday that iTunes 10 had killed off old Automator workflows, it had all the hallmarks of a bug… and as it turns out, a but it is. As it turns out, the problem is caused because ...