Quick tip: AppleScript application toggle

9 Responses to “Quick tip: AppleScript application toggle”

1. D Curtis says:

   January 22, 2011 at 11:49 am

   This is a very weird bug. Seems like it just doesn’t want to work inside the System Events tell. If you do the following it works. It’s kinda ugly but I think it’s because if you do a tell inside another tell then the second goes through the first. So in the original you’re telling System Events to tell Mail to activate.

   set appName to "Mail"
   set startIt to false
   tell application "System Events"
     if not (exists process appName) then
       set startIt to true
     else if frontmost of process appName then
       set visible of process appName to false
     else
       set frontmost of process appName to true
     end if
   end tell
   if startIt then
     tell application appName to activate
   end if
   

   But what’s even more weird is that this works,

   set appName to "Mail"
   set startIt to false
   tell application "System Events"
       if not (exists process appName) then
           tell application "Mail" to activate
       else if frontmost of process appName then
           set visible of process appName to false
       else
           set frontmost of process appName to true
       end if
   end tell
   if startIt then
       tell application appName to activate
   end if
   

   but this does not work as you probably already know,

   set appName to "Mail"
   
   tell application "System Events"
     if not (exists process appName) then
       tell application appName to activate
     else if frontmost of process appName then
       set visible of process appName to false
     else
       set frontmost of process appName to true
     end if
   end tell
   

   Also you can use exists instead of name of every process ...
2. Zettt says:

   January 22, 2011 at 11:58 am

   Interesting problem. The solution is a bit awkward, but I got it working. (Launch By Creator or Identifier )

   set appName to bundle identifier of (info for (path to application "Mail"))
   
3. Zettt says:

   January 22, 2011 at 1:23 pm

   Final solution. Don’t know whether this is better than other solutions. I guess it is one way to do it …

   set appName to "Safari"
   set alreadyLaunched to false
   
   tell application "System Events"
       if not (exists process appName) then
           set alreadyLaunched to false
       else
           set alreadyLaunched to true
       end if
       set frontmostApp to name of the first process whose frontmost is true
   end tell
   
   if alreadyLaunched is false then
       tell application appName to launch
   else if alreadyLaunched is true then
       if frontmostApp is equal to appName then
           tell application "System Events" to set visible of process appName to false
       else
           tell application appName to activate
       end if
   end if
   
   • D Curtis says:

     January 22, 2011 at 9:56 pm

     @Zett activate will bring the app to the front whether it is open or not. So really, all you need to do is check if the app you’re looking for is frontmost. If it is, you hide it. If it isn’t, you activate it. Ideally this should work but I don’t care enough anymore to test it.

     set appName to "Mail"
     set needsActivation to false
     tell application "System Events"
       if frontmost of process appName then
         set visible of process appName to false
       else
         set needsActivation to true
       end if
     end tell
     
     if needsActivation then
       tell application appName to activate
     end if
     
4. Jason Clarke says:

   January 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm

   Seriously Brett, this is all kinds of awesome. This is like the umpteenth time I’ve wished for a feature of some kind, only to have it solved by what is for you, merely a “quick tip”.
5. Jason Clarke says:

   January 28, 2011 at 3:52 pm

   It would be fantastic to be able to set global hotkeys to jump to specific tabs in Chrome. My first 3 tabs in Chrome are Personal Gmail, Work Gmail, and FogBugz. I’d love the ability to jump directly to one of those three using a keyboard shortcut.

   It seems to me that it should be possible to modify the application toggle script to add a “command-1″ sent to the app once it displays. That would solve the problem for me. It seems trivially easy, but my experience is that things that seem like easy changes rarely are.

   I’m trying to use variations of:

   tell application "System Events" to keystroke "1" using command down
   

   in various spots in the script, but in testing it doesn’t ever seem to respond by switching the active tab.

   Any chance someone reading this would be able to help me with how to do this?
6. Üüüüber-Awesome Skype Shortcut! | Clever Developer says:

   June 27, 2011 at 10:50 pm

   […] started with two snippets of AppleScript, one for toggling the visibility of an app, and one for answering Skype with a hotkey. The code on these pages isn’t mine, though […]
7. Ric Zito says:

   November 23, 2011 at 8:55 am

   Hi there,

   I’m coming to this thread very late, but I find it interesting because I too use Spark as my go-to hotkey app, and have done for years. It still works great, even on Lion. I just thought you might like to know that Spark has built in “Hide foreground” and “Hide others” actions : no need for Applescript or anything similar. It’s global (if you want it to be) so it works in ANY app, and plus, it’s much faster than Applescript.

   In Spark’s main window, just dbl-click “Application” in the sidebar, and in the slide-dwon sheet that appears, drop down the Action menu. There you’ll find the commands. I’ve set cmd-H and cmd-opt-H as my hotkeys. It works an absolute treat.

   cheers, Ric
8. Ric Zito says:

   November 23, 2011 at 8:56 am

   Sorry — I meant ctrl-H and ctrl-opt-H…