Welcome to the lab.

Ok, this should probably be my last Bunch post for a while. I just wanted to point out a couple of new features.

First, as I mentioned in another post recently, there’s a new syntax which allows you to launch an app when closing a Bunch. Take Dropbox as an example. If you quit Dropbox when starting a context that needs the bandwidth (e.g. podcasting), you probably want to load it again when you’re done. This makes it easy: just use !!Dropbox.

The double bang is a bit inelegant, but I’d already used !AppName for quitting an app, whereas with any script commands it means “run when quitting”. So that’s a bit ugly, but I figure it’s a double negative, which kind of makes sense, semantically.

I also added the ability to affect volume and mute settings of input and output devices independently. Now you can use (audio input mute) or (audio output volume 65). (audio volume 50) still works and defaults to the current output device.

Ok, here’s the headline feature: I’ve added a feature that allows you to define multiple sections in a snippet file, and specifically reference them when including in a Bunch.

Bunch allows snippet files, which are just partial Bunches in your Bunch folder with any extension other than .bunch. So if you have MySnippet.snippet in your Bunch folder, you can then include its contents in any Bunch using:

<MySnippet.snippet

Which is handy if you want to avoid repeating common tasks in every Bunch. With this new feature, you can have a single snippet file containing multiple snippets, delineated with lines like this:

#[Writing]

%nvUltra Beta
MultiMarkdown Composer
Marked 2

#[Comms]

Skype
Slack
TweetBot
Messages
(dnd off)

Then you can reference an individual section in the include line with a fragment identifier:

<MySnippet.snippet#Comms

If you don’t include the fragment id, it will run all the sections, which opens some possibilities for complex snippet handling. One universal snippet but the ability to run just individual parts of it when needed.

As you were.

If you have a Stream Deck, you probably have some buttons that launch apps. Using Bunch adds a ton of options beyond just launching a single app: you can have a button that toggles entire groups of apps, running commands and scripts, changing your wallpaper, hiding your Dock… you know, all the things Bunch can do.

The core of the trick is Bunch’s URL handler. You can use x-bunch://toggle (or just x-bunch://open if you don’t want to be able to quit the Bunch). Just add your Bunch name to the end of the url, replacing any spaces with %20, and you have a URL with which you can toggle any Bunch. For example, to toggle my Marked Screencast Bunch, I would just use x-bunch://toggle/Marked%20Screencast.

I discovered after further exploration that the default “Open Website” action for the Stream Deck does in fact work with URL handlers, there’s just a delay in it actually launching. But if you want to skip Keyboard Maestro, you can simply put x-bunch://toggle/BUNCH%20NAME into a System->Website button’s URL.

So the biggest hurdle is just making a button trigger a URL. The default web launch commands don’t seem to do the trick with system url handlers. The best solution I’ve found is to use Keyboard Maestro, and since I already owned it, I didn’t look much further. I’m certain there’s an existing plugin for Stream Deck that would handle this directly, but I didn’t find it yet.

In Keyboard Maestro you’ll set up a macro for each Bunch URL. The macro contains a single action: Open URL, with the x-bunch URL and a target of “Default Application.”

Assigning the macro to a key can be done in two ways. There’s a default Keyboard Maestro plugin available from the “More Actions” menu in the Stream Deck configuration app. That plugin allows you to assign a custom USB Device Key to each button, which you can then apply to the trigger in Keyboard Maestro. Just set up the button, then go to Keyboard Maestro, add a USB Device Key trigger, and then click the button you created on the Stream Deck.

The second way is actually nicer, in my opinion, but I discovered it after I’d already set up all my buttons. There’s a plugin available called KM Link which avoids the whole hotkey process entirely. Just grab the KM Link plugin from GitHub (click the “Code” button and download the zip) and install it by double clicking on the .streamDeckPlugin file. Then you can drag a KM Link action from the Custom section of the sidebar to a button, and in its configuration you’ll get a list of all your Keyboard Maestro macros. Just select the macro to run and you’re done. This means you don’t have to assign triggers to the Bunch macros at all.

You’ll probably want to create some custom icons for your Bunches. Most of mine use an app icon, and I have a little script that takes the name of any installed app and outputs a PNG file, which you can then just apply to your button.

Have fun.

I haven’t worked on Bunch for a while because it was just doing everything I needed from it. But you know how it goes when you can’t sleep…

It’s been a while since I talked about it, so I’ll just real quick remind you that it’s an app that lets you use plain text files to launch batches of apps, and run Automator workflows, AppleScripts, and shell commands. Oh, and it can do things like toggle Do Not Disturb and Dark mode and change your desktop wallpaper. All sitting in your Dock or your menu bar and just a click away.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I needed to automate switching audio inputs and outputs and I thought Bunch should probably be able to do that. Thus began my first exploration into CoreAudio and some of the intricacies of macOS audio. Obviously my needs were fairly rudimentary, but I did learn a lot in the process.

The latest version now includes commands for switching audio inputs and outputs, and for setting volume. Bunch commands are surrounded by parenthesis, and are pretty flexible with spacing and such. All of the audio commands start with the word “audio”. If you use the following in your Bunch file, it will set the volume to 50%:

(audio volume 50)

That on its own is pretty lame, because you could always just send an AppleScript one-liner to do the same thing. But here’s where it’s a bit handier: you can switch your system input and output devices using partial name matching. Just use (audio input DEVICE NAME) and (audio output DEVICE NAME).

I have a bunch of audio devices on my system. My Scarlett Solo, my Alesis iO Hub, my Komplete Audio 6, plus the built in speakers and some Loopback devices. With this new feature, I can have the system default change when launching or quitting a bunch. As I was just saying a second ago, you can use partial names when referring to your devices; any unique portion of the name will find the right device, and it’s case insensitive. For example:

(audio input scarlett)
(audio output macbook)
(audio volume 0)
!(audio input macbook)
!(audio volume 80)
!(audio output io hub)

That includes both “start” and “stop” commands; the “!” lines will only be run when quitting (or toggling off) a Bunch. So when I open this Bunch it sets my input to the Scarlett Solo and my output to the MacBook Pro Speakers, and then mutes the output. This is ideal for my podcasting setup, as my output from Skype is handled directly by the app and this prevents other audio (dings and whistles) from being heard. Then when I quit the Bunch, it toggles the volume back up to 80% and switches the output to my the iO Hub (which powers my studio monitors).

One caveat is that many external audio interfaces (like ALL of mine) don’t allow volume to be set by the system. So the volume command generally only operates when an internal source is selected. But I haven’t had any issues with the input/output commands on any of my devices, and just being able to mute the internal speakers when needed covers my bases. There’s room to flesh it out more, though, so if you have reasonable requests, let me know!

Just as a reminder, the project page is where I document all of Bunch’s features, and it serves as the only real help system for it. There’s enough there that I’m certain that — were you looking for something to do on a slow day — you could find new and cool things you didn’t even know Bunch did with just a little looking.

I think these tools are a useful addition to Bunch, and I’m already using them in all of my podcasting, music listening, video watching, and screencasting Bunches. Download link for the latest version is below.