Nov

24

Automatically adding Screenshots to Yoink with Hazel (Improved)

Filed Under Computers & Tech, Automation on November 24, 2017 | 3 Comments

Note: This is an improved version of my original solution to this problem.

As a reminder, the problem to be solved is to have screenshots automatically appear in Yoink as they are taken. Again, as a reminder, on macOS, screenshots are saved to the desktop as files with names of the form Screen Shot YYYY-MM-DD at HH.MM.SS.png, e.g. Screen Shot 2017-11-22 at 22.30.10.png. And one final reminder — Hazel is an app that watches the filesystem for events, and executes actions in response. Hazel rules are added to folders.

My original solution was to add a Hazel rule to the desktop folder with the condition Name starts with Screen Shot and a single Shell script action which used the open terminal command to send the screenshot to Yoink. The good people at Hazel replied to my tweet about the original post with a suggestion: I think you can do the same thing without a script. Try using the “Open” action.

Unsurprisingly, the Hazel suggestion proved to be spot on.

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Nov

24

Automatically Adding Screenshots to Yoink with Hazel (Take 1)

Filed Under Computers & Tech, Automation on  | 2 Comments

Note: based on feedback from Hazel via Twitter I’ve improved on this original Hazel rule, described separately here.

One of my favourite app discoveries of 2017 has been Yoink — a Mac an iOS app that revolutionaries drag-and-drop by simply providing a shelf where you can temporarily store anything drag-and-dropable as you switch between windows, apps, and even spaces. I reviewed Yoink on episode 496 of the Chit Chat Across the Pond podcast.

Anyway, I use the Yoink all the time, but, it’s missing what I believe would be a fantastic feature — the automatic addition of screenshots to the Yoink bar as you take them.

I contacted the developer to suggest/request this as a feature, and he didn’t seem all that interested in adding it, but, he did make two suggestions for how I could go about getting the functionality I wanted indirectly. He made two suggestions — buy a different app of his, ScreenFloat, which is specifically for managing screen shots, or, build an automator script to take screenshots and send them to Yoink.

This week I finally found a simple solution I’m happy with — Hazel combined with a simple terminal command.

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