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Automation April: Mac Outliner Bike Adds Shortcuts Support

Last spring, I reviewed Bike, Jesse Grosjean of Hog Bay Software’s excellent outlining app for the Mac. The app’s simple, elegant design keeps the focus on the outline you’re creating, while its rich, keyboard-driven set of features enable ideas to be organized quickly and efficiently. Advanced features, like versioning, linking and grouping rows, and a long list of ways to view, navigate and edit your outlines, make Bike one of the best ways to create outlines on the Mac.

Bike has 14 Shortcuts actions.

Bike has 14 Shortcuts actions.

Bike’s focus on efficiency and extensive support for keyboard shortcuts and AppleScript make it the perfect candidate for Shortcuts support, which was added to the app today. Version 1.11 of Bike adds 14 Shortcuts actions to the app:

  • Create Outline
  • Open Outline
  • Open Row
  • Get Rows
  • Fold Rows
  • Focus Row
  • Edit Rows
  • Import Rows
  • Export Rows
  • Find Rows
  • Create Row
  • Delete Rows
  • Move Rows
  • Get Selection

The actions cover a lot of the functionality of Bike with a focus on outlines, text and row selections, and rows. Outlines can be created from scratch or existing ones opened, and Get Selection returns any selected text and its outline row.

Exporting all rows as plain text.

Exporting all rows as plain text.

The remainder of Bike’s Shortcuts actions apply to rows, the building blocks of outlines. Rows can be opened in-app or retrieved in a variety of ways, such as by their root, row ID, focus, selection, ancestor rows, child rows, and descendant rows by using the Get Rows action. There’s also a Find Rows action that uses predicate filtering to allow rows matching multiple criteria to be located and sorted. Rows can be imported and exported in Bike, OPML, and plain text formats too.

Rows can also be created, edited, deleted, and moved within an outline with precision, thanks to a detailed set of action parameters. Actions for focusing on particular rows and folding and unfolding rows round out the available actions by allowing users to use Shortcuts to prepare their outline work environment automatically.

I’ve only just begun experimenting with Bike’s new Shortcuts integration, but it’s clear that thanks to extensive parameter and predicate filtering, the automation opportunities are extensive. Especially if you work with big outlines that require frequent, repetitive edits, Bike’s new Shortcuts integration could save you a lot of time.

Bike 1.11 is available on the App Store and directly from Hog Bay Software as a free download. Some features, including Shortcuts support, require a $2.99/month or $19.99/year subscription from the App Store or a one-time license purchase directly from Hog Bay Software, which comes with one year of updates.

You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: The Making of S-GPT, Our First Automation April Workshop, a Club-wide Discount, and Lots of App Coverage

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

The Making of S-GPT, Part 1: Using the ChatGPT API with Apple’s Shortcuts App to Have Conversations with OpenAI’s Assistant

Last week saw the return of Federico’s Automation Academy column for Club MacStories+ and Premier members. The latest edition dug into the techniques Federico used to build S-GPT, his shortcut that integrates OpenAI’s Chat-GPT with Apple’s OSes.

Federico’s column is a deep dive into working with web APIs in shortcuts, navigating JSON dictionaries, and the clever way S-GPT stores its ongoing conversation in a variable. Whether you’re working with ChatGPT’s API or another web API, the column is a great place to learn how to to hook your shortcuts up to web APIs.

Automation April: Shortcuts Workshop, Part 1

Last week we also held our first Automation April workshop where Federico and I were joined by Jack Wellborn, who won Best Overall Shortcut in last year’s Automation April Shortcuts Contest, to talk about tips for coming up with shortcuts ideas, our recent shortcuts experiments and projects, incorporating AppleScript and other techniques into Mac-based Shortcuts, and more.

Alerty: A New Club-Wide Discount

In MacStories Weekly 364, we announced a new Club-wide discount from our friends at Alerty, a push notification service. Alerty’s incredibly easy-to-use web API allows you to generate rich push notifications to any of your Apple devices. They can be used to extend Shortcuts’ notification system, triggered by server events, and more.

Members can get 50% off on a monthly or annual subscription by visiting the Club Discounts page.

MacStories Weekly: Issue 364

MenuBar Stats: Advanced System Monitoring [Sponsor]

MenuBar Stats is a suite of 9 menu bar modules for monitoring your Mac developed over the course of 10 years of listening carefully to customer feedback. The app tracks your Mac’s:

  • Battery
  • Bluetooth
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • GPU
  • Memory
  • Network
  • And, with a helper app, your Mac’s temperature and fan speed

The app, which is highly customizable, provides essential details, with even more extensive information just a click away. Modules can be combined into a single window, displayed as individual windows, and anchored to always be visible. The stats monitored are available as a collection of more than 10 widgets and accessible through MenuBar Stats’ Shortcuts actions. The app has been extensively tested on and tuned for Apple’s latest M1 and M2-based Macs and includes a tool to clean your Mac’s memory too.

MenuBar Stats goes beyond monitoring and reporting with the ability to set up notifications to alert you of the details that matter most to you and even run shortcuts from them. Whether that’s when your battery reaches a certain level or when there’s a process that is monopolizing your CPU, MenBar Stats can alert you, so you’ll know the moment your Mac needs your attention.

Acting on those notifications couldn’t be simpler. MenuBar Stats can take you to a long list of Mac system utilities from your menu bar or using global keyboard shortcuts that you define. There’s also backup and restore functionality, so you can recreate your carefully-crafted setup anywhere.

It’s easy to see why MenuBar Stats has an average rating of 4.5 stars worldwide. Download MenuBar Stats today to see for yourself why so many people rely on it to monitor their Macs.

Our thanks to MenuBar Stats for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Deadline Extended for Automation April Shortcuts Contest to April 21st

As we head into the weekend, we wanted to let everyone know that we’ve extended the Automation April Shortcuts Contest to Friday, April 21st, at 5:00 PM Eastern US time. That gives you four extra days to finish your shortcuts and submit them.

Remember:

  • You can submit up to two shortcuts for consideration in any of the six categories
  • You can edit your submissions until the deadline on April 21st
  • Shortcuts do not have to be complex to win the contest; originality and utility are key factors in the judges’ decisions
  • We have tons of great prizes, including a Loupedeck Live S and CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 4 for the winner of the Best Overall Shortcut, plus Club MacStories memberships

For the complete rules, be sure to read our post from last week.

Good luck, and use the extra time wisely!

You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.

MacStories Unwind: An Iced Coffee, a Mouse, New Caledonia, and John Wick

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18:04

This week on MacStories Unwind, I explain iced coffee to Federico, who has a new Logitech Lift mouse and has been playing Tchia, while I spent hours at the theater enjoying John Wick, Chapter 4.

Iced Coffee

Federico’s Picks:

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

John’s Pick:

Unlock Big App Savings with Club MacStories+ and Premier Memberships

A core perk of a Club MacStories+ or Club Premier membership is the wide variety of discounts on our favorite apps and services we offer in partnership with developers. Our app discount program brings Club members a long list of deals that regularly rotate, so there’s always something new to try. That makes it easy to save hundreds of dollars on some of the best apps out there when you sign up and to keep on saving month after month.

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Drawing a Blank→

Source: furbo.org.

Source: furbo.org.

Yesterday, Craig Hockenberry announced a free Apple TV app he created called Blank. The app blanks out your TV screen until you press a button on the Apple TV remote. That way, you can listen to music or a podcast through an Apple TV without also watching the album art or screensavers.

Blank is a clever solution to something that’s been a problem ever since the second-generation Apple TV, which ditched its dedicated audio out port in favor of HDMI. How do I know that? Well, I tackled the same problem myself in 2016 in a far hackier way than Hockenberry, which I shared more than 300 issues ago in MacStories Weekly 25. As I said then, when the Apple TV’s flyover screensavers, and even HDMI, were brand new:

I enjoy the new flyover screensavers on the Apple TV, but whether you have a current generation Apple TV and use those, or use a different screensaver with any model of the Apple TV, the screensavers are a distraction when you throw a party and want to use the Apple TV for music. In my experience, people are drawn to the screensaver like moths, focusing on it instead of socializing.

My solution? Create a Photos album with a single 1080p image of a black rectangle and use it with the Apple TV’s ‘Sliding Panels’ screensaver. Blank is a far more elegant solution and even offers an inspirational quote that appears onscreen before the screen goes blank.

You can download Blank from the App Store for free.

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S-GPT 1.0.2 Brings Date and Time Awareness, Integration with macOS Services Menu, Passthrough Mode, Better HomePod Support, and More

S-GPT 1.0.2.

S-GPT 1.0.2.

I just published version 1.0.2 of S-GPT, the shortcut I released last week to have conversations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and integrate it directly with native features of Apple’s OSes. You can find the updated download link at the end of this post, in the original article, and in the MacStories Shortcuts Archive; before you replace version 1.0.1 of S-GPT, save your existing OpenAI API key somewhere as you’ll have to paste it again in the shortcut later.

I’m going to include the full changelog for S-GPT 1.0.2 below, but long story short: S-GPT is now aware of the current date and time, and I’ve heard all the requests about improving interactions with the HomePod and Siri, so I made that part much better. S-GPT can now perform a variety of date/time calculations with natural language, and you can end a conversation by saying “no” or “stop”.

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Automation April: The Loupedeck Live S Is a More Portable and Affordable Automation Control Panel for the Mac

In 2021, I reviewed the Loupedeck Live, a programmable control panel for the Mac and Windows PCs for Club MacStories members as part of my Macintosh Desktop Experience column. It’s an excellent device, but its price put it at a disadvantage to a similarly-sized Elgato Stream Deck despite several other advantages that I explained in the review.

Last year, Loupedeck released the Loupedeck Live S, a smaller, more affordable Loupedeck that retains the core experience of the Loupedeck Live, but dispenses with a handful of physical buttons and dials. The new device retails for $189 compared to the Loupedeck Live, which is $269. That’s still $40 more than the 15-button Stream Deck MK.2, but a significantly narrower difference for a device that offers a wider range of functionality, making it worth another look if you were put off by the Loupedeck Live’s price.

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