If youwanttosavetimein
yourworkingday,avoiding
havingtoopenotherapps
unnecessarilyis a good
placetostart.A recent
additiontomacOS,Quick
Actionshelpyouautomate
theprocessesthatyou
performonyourMac
regularlyandthenselect
themfroma pop-upmenu.What are
Quick
Actions?
If you haven’t yet explored Quick Actions, which were introducedwithMojave,thennowis theperfecttime
because they can really aid your Mac multitasking.Master Quick Actions
1
View Quick Actions
You can view the current Quick Actions
for a file by Ctrl+ clicking on it and then
highlighting the ‘Quick Actions’ item. The
current actions will appear in a sub-menu.2
Createnewactions
To startcreatinga newQuickAction,
launch yourAutomatorapp,clickon‘New
Document’ andthenchoosethe‘Quick
Action’ optionforyourdocument.3
Buildaction
Determinewhattypeof filesyouwant
theQuickActiontoapplytofromthe
‘Workflowreceivescurrent’menuandthen
clickon‘Library’in thetop-left.4
Drag and drop
Now select the same type of file from
the Library categories to view the actions and
then drag actions from the library into the
grey space in the main window.5
Savethe action
When youarehappy,gotoFile>Save
and name yournewaction.Youcannow
quit the Automatorappastheactionwillbe
applied to yourQuickActions.6
Road-test action
NowCtrl+clickonthatparticulartype
of fileonyourdesktop,suchasanimage,
highlight‘QuickActions’andyournewaction
shouldbepresentin themenu.You can also perform Quick
Actions from the toolbar at
the top of your open Finder
windows. Make sure that the
‘Action’ option is present by
Ctrl+clicking on the toolbar
and selecting ‘Customise
Toolbar’ and then you can
highlight a file within the
window, click on the Action
menu and choose your newly-
created Quick Action from the
bottom of the menu.Folder
actions
You can enable/disable Quick Actions by going to System
Preferences>Extensions and then clicking on ‘Finder’ in the left column.