FastScripts: Turbocharge your AppleScripts
FastScripts is an AppleScript management utility that offers several nifty improvements over the way OS X manages AppleScripts. It’s a very useful add-on for working within Apple Mail and for working with Mail in other apps.
FastScripts installs itself as an additional icon in the Menubar. From the screenshot after the jump you can see some of its advantages straight away:
First, Apple’s Script Menu places the application-specific scripts at the bottom, in the Fastscripts menu they are more easily visible at the top. (Matt points out in the comments that the option to display the application-specific scripts at the top in Apple’s own menu can be configured in the AppleScript Utility. Thanks).
Secondly, you see that some of the scripts have keyboard shortcuts. Fastscripts allows you to nominate a keyboard shortcut for every script if you like. I can only remember a limited number of combinations, but it still speeds things up. The Fastscript menu itself is activated by a customizable shortcut, so your fingers need never leave the keyboard.
Fastscripts also manages application focus more cleverly. It switches focus only when needed.
When I first switched to Macs about two years, AppleScript wasn’t even on my horizon. Perhaps only Services are more neglected by switchers like me and normal users. Now I find that I am using AppleScripts more and more, both within Apple Mail (Mail Scripts, Hidden Mail, MultipleReply) and in order to integrate with Mail when I am in other apps (Feedmailer, Scale to Mail). FastScripts helps me to do all that better.
You might think that this is only for “power-users” or those who write AppleScripts, but you would be wrong. Even normal users feel the benefits.
It comes with a 30 day or 100 script launch trial period and a full single-user license costs USD 15. FastScripts is available from the developer’s website.
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October 6th, 2005 at 8:34 am
Thanks for the write-up, Tim!
If you want to chat more about your experience with the “Fuhgeddaboutit” script, please drop me a line. If there’s an activation issue I’d like to make sure I get it ironed out for the next release.
Thanks,
Daniel
October 6th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
You can just change one setting to make the Script Menu show it’s “Current Application” scripts at the top:
Script Menu?¢‚Ć‚ÄôOpen AppleScript Utility
Then, in the window that appears, make sure that both Checkboxes in the bottom section are checked, and choose
Show application scripts at: ?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ top.
October 6th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Daniel: No worries. Thanks for the app!
Matt: Thanks. I didn’t see that option in the AppleScript Utility. Looking but not seeing….
October 7th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
[...] With FastScripts you can even assign a keyboard shortcut to each one for extra ease of use. [...]
October 15th, 2005 at 8:39 am
[...] The new version works more smoothly with Fastscripts. [...]
October 26th, 2005 at 7:31 am
[...] 10, 13, 14. Better integration with iCal. Mail2iCal, Mail2iCalToDo, iCalMail, and Fuhgeddaboutit all offer tighter integration through AppleScript. With Fastscripts these scripts are only a keyboard shortcut away. [...]
October 30th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
[...] Daniel Jalkut, the creator of FastScripts, has written an AppleScript that will grab the HTML out of a selected message and save it to disk. Obviously this is an enormous improvement on the jiggery-pokery of viewing the message in raw source, cutting and pasting into TextEdit and then saving. [...]
December 21st, 2005 at 10:31 am
[...] Spell Catcher X. Spell checker, snippet manager, on the fly formatter. Useful in Mail.app and elsewhere Other individual AppleScripts and apps like FastScripts are great but my general usage patterns can’t get them into a top ten. You can find them all in the Hawk Wings Plug-in and Add-on List. Technorati Tags: Digg, top ten, GTD, email, notification, AppleScripts, Mail.app, spam [...]
December 28th, 2005 at 11:15 am
[...] FastScripts is an AppleScript management utility that offers several nifty improvements over the way OS X manages AppleScripts. [...]
January 29th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
[...] FastScripts, the ideal companion to the many Mail.app AppleScripts mentioned on Hawk Wings, has been updated. [...]
January 30th, 2006 at 10:28 am
It sounds like FastScripts is a neat application; however, if you’re just looking to move your application scripts up and assign hot keys, there may be some cheaper options available.
As already mentioned, it’s possible to have the Apple Scripts Menu show applications at the top of the list.
Additionally, you can setup a QuickSilver (free and wonderful) Trigger to launch an AppleScript on hotkey.