The names of these things are getting pretty bad. But the Open on Which Mac iOS Shortcut I created is still one of my favorite automations I’ve created. I use it every day to send links from my phone to whichever computer suits the context for the content I’m saving for later.
But I don't only discover interesting links on my iPhone. Occasionally I’ll come across something while I’m at work and want to send it to my home computer so it’s open, waiting for me when I sit down.
The flexibility of having built the OOWM service on Plaintext files, Dropbox, and Hazel means I don't need to modify any of the existing automation steps in order to add a new source to the mix. All I need to do is create a fast method for saving a url to a specifically-named text file in a specific location, and the Hazel rule will see it and act on it, just as it does with links from my iPhone.
Keyboard Maestro, Duh
The Keyboard Maestro macro follows the same structure as the iOS Shortcut. First, it grabs the url from the active Safari tab. Then it presents the user with a list of computers to choose from for the destination of the link. Once a computer name has been selected, it uses a dictionary of computer name short-codes to create the specific text file name, then saves the file to the OOWM folder in Dropbox.
The filename — since it's too long to read in the screenshot — is:
%Dictionary[WhichComp,%Variable%compName%]%-URL-%ICUDateTime%yyyy-MM-dd%.txt
It really is that simple. And since this is running on a Mac, it’s much faster than its iOS counterpart.
And with that, one of my favorite automations just got more favoriter.