Ok, this one is a little embarrassing. You know how I often refer to myself as a mad scientist? This is what I’m talking about.
I made a crazy thing last weekend that has such limited practical value that even if I found anyone else who could truly benefit from it, our combined total of time savings would struggle to come close to the Saturday morning hours that went into it. That said, it’s too neat a trick and I put too much loving care into it to hide it.
It started while I was working on documentation for nvUltra and wanted some quick screenshots of various menus. I generally have reservations doing this because over time menus always change so it’s hard to automate, and you know you’re going to have to do this all over again next time you move a menu item or the OS updates with some fancy new look that makes all your current screenshots look outdated. Plus the process of taking menu screenshots itself has some annoyances for me (I detailed them in the docs). If only there was a way to create a playground that I could automate…
My solution is called NiftyMenu. With one script it automatically builds an HTML playground that exactly duplicates the menus of any Mac app. Click menus to lock them in place, double-click and option-click to add different callouts. Toggle background images and Dark Mode with keystrokes. Then use a JavaScript API to automate fuzzy search for clicking items, adding callouts, desktop images, and Dark Mode. See the demo to understand what I’m talking about. If you dare, visit the GitHub repository to see the full depth of the madness.
Yes, I’ll ask my doctor about a med change.
