Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I want to automate a long sequence of keystrokes that I have to type every time I use a specific web site. How can I do it in Mac OS X. I've tried the Automator. I record the sequence, but when I run it I got this error:
The action “Watch Me Do” encountered an error.
Check the actionʼs properties and try running the workflow again.
To do this, I created a automator workflow with a Run AppleScript object with this content:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "A"
keystroke "B"
keystroke "C"
end tell
return input
end run
This worked fine for me
In addition to writing your own script, Keyboard Maestro can be used to compose key sequences like this.
You could create a macro with an application like Keyboard Maestro, iKey or QuicKeys. Many of them also support something like the quick macros in Keyboard Maestro. You can press ⌃F1 to start or stop recording a macro, and then play it back with ⌥F1.
You can also emulate keypresses with AppleScript. The delay at the start is not needed if the script is run with FastScripts.
delay 0.5 -- if the script is run with a shortcut that has modifier keys
activate application "TextEdit"
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "aa"
key code 123 using {shift down, command down}
end tell
The keystroke command can only be used to insert characters that are included in the current keyboard layout. If the text is long enough, there's also a visible delay when it's inserted.
Another way to insert text is to use the clipboard:
set the clipboard to "aa"
delay 0.05
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down
Unfortunately, you cannot add a mouseclick function in any of these or workflow. Even applescript has a difficult time implementing a mouse click in an app.
I've authored a tool called sendkeys which can be used to send keystrokes and mouse events to an application.
Example, the following script will activate Google Chrome, open a new tab and navigate to Google:
sendkeys -a 'Google Chrome' -c '<c:t:command>www.google.com<c:enter>'
It can be installed with brew:
brew install socsieng/tap/sendkeys
