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Shortcuts on macOS: A review

macos shortcuts opinion

This is an opinion piece on Shortcuts v5.0 (1144.2) for macOS Monterey v12.0.1. Readers of my blog know I use Automator, AppleScripts, and shell scripts to get stuff done. So I was curious to see if I could replace all these with just Shortcuts. TL;DR: no, no I can’t.

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Shell script to move duplicate files

macos shell

I setup Firefox on macOS to automatically download files to my “Downloads” folder without prompting (under Preferences... > Downloads, and select Save files to... instead of Always ask you where to save files). If there is an existing file with the same name, Firefox appends (1) to the filename (then (2), (3) and so on). Over time, I land up with files with similar file names, which may or may not be identical. This shell script finds and moves duplicate files to a different folder... for subsequent manual deletion.

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CoreSimulator Crash Loop

guide macos

Last month, one morning, my MacBook (still running Catalina) started behaving strangely - though I was not running anything, it was sluggish as the CPU was too busy and the fans were on high. I traced it to the iOS Simulator service that comes with XCode.

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