Here’s a quick screen­cast I did of how Automa­tor works at a basic level.

Noth­ing too fancy in this video, just renam­ing 7 files that could prob­a­bly have been done man­u­ally but I thought I’d use the oppor­tu­nity to show how Automa­tor works and help you see how you might be able to use this app that’s built-​​in to OS X to save some time.

I was writ­ing a blog post on Lemon Pro­duc­tions and wanted to include some screen­shots of the Word­Press theme I was talk­ing about and… well, I don’t want to spoil the end­ing. Just watch the video. It’s pretty intense.¹

Direct link to video on Vimeo /​ Direct link to video on YouTube

Other Resources

The Mac Power Users pod­cast recently posted an episode on Automa­tor that includes a bunch of help­ful tips in audio form as well as a whole bunch of links to resources related to Automa­tor. Here are a few of my favourites:

• Tips from auto​mat​ed​work​flows​.com
• File and Folder Automa­tor Action Pack — $14.99 in the Mac App Store and Text Automa­tor Actions Pack — $14.99 in the Mac App Store — two pack­ages of advanced Automa­tor actions from the guy who put together the Automa­tor actions for Microsoft Office
• Mac Automa­tion Made Sim­ple with Ben Waldie — video pod­cast with plenty of tips and tricks

Leave a com­ment if you have any ques­tions about Automa­tor or have other resources you like for get­ting more out of Automator.