Here is how to create your own “Open with…” right-click menu item under MacOS’s “Quick Actions” menu: Open the Automator app on your Mac Choose “New Document” -> “Quick Action” On the left-hand column, search for “Run Shell Script” and add it to the workflow on the right. For the shell script, you’ll want to…
Author: Zan
Private Apple Engineer. Splunk Data Analyst. Script Monkey and music enthusiast.
Python: Show your friends playing games on Steam
This requires the following: A Steam account (set to “public”) A Steam API Key Your SteamID64 ID Friends (public, online, and playing a game) Simply replace “YOUR_STEAM_API_KEY” with your Steam API key and “YOUR_STEAM_UID64” with your SteamID64 ID. Copy the script below and save it as “steam_snake.py”, then run the file: $python3 steam_snake.py It should…
How to combine videos on macOS’s Terminal
Here’s a quick tech tip on how to combine multiple small videos into one on the Mac with the command shell (Terminal). Let’s say you saved an Instagram story that contains multiple videos to your phone and you want to combine them into a single video to share with your loved ones. It’s pretty simple….
Wi-Fi persistence
I’ve noticed that sometimes I come home and my iMac has lost its connection to my Wi-Fi network. I’ve had enough, so I wrote a script (which I wrapped with a LaunchDaemon to keep it running), to check and make sure the Wi-Fi card is on and joined to my preferred network. Caution: Use this…
Clean up your Desktop with Folder Actions
Familiar with the scenario of “Screen Shot” files filling up your Desktop space? Sick and tired of manually moving them to a folder? What about moving all images on your Desktop to a custom folder? What about documents? Well, you can with Apple’s “Folder Actions” using Automator. It’s very simple! Start with creating a folder…
Give your Mac users temporary admin
Lately I saw a post on JAMF’s user forums with someone wanting to give temporary admin access to their users for a set amount of time. This reminded me that I had such a script and that I should share it with the world. So here you go! The script basically takes an argument with…
Mac OS and the Keychain Experience
“So, I’m getting these prompts when I log in that I need to enter my Keychain password? Like, does it want my new password or my old one?” This is a typical question I’ve been hearing for almost 10 years in regards to Macs that are bound to a directory of some kind (usually Windows…
How I downloaded a video from Twitter using Curl
Update 1: It appears that Twitter has changed their scheme in how they display videos. They are now using a JavaScript method that obfuscates the video URL via a blob mechanic. The URL is only able to be decoded by the user’s web browsing device and cannot be “CURL’d” by a command line. For reasons…
Troubleshooting Apple’s PackageMaker
Troubleshooting Apple’s PackageMaker can be a hassle. Especially when you’re getting generic errors, such as The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance Recently, I ran into an issue with compiling packages on a Mac that was bound to an Active Directory environment. When I was…
Download Media: An OS X/macOS bash script to download files from a few popular websites
I made this script so I could download the MP4 versions of Imgur GIFs and Gfycat MP4s because I like to make a lot of funny images for some online communities. I expanded to incorporate the YouTube-DL binary, ffmpeg, NHL videos, and Instagram videos and jpegs. Feel free to copy and write to this file in /usr/local/bin, or…