apps

Yoink for Mac Usage Tip #9

The following explains how send screenshots directly to Yoink.
For more Usage Tips like this, click here.

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a customer of Yoink, Bogdan V. He wanted to make Yoink detect screenshots he created so they would show up in Yoink’s window.

Automator to the Rescue

I had the idea of using Automatorto create the screenshot and send it to Yoink. After experimenting around a little bit, I sent Bogdan a very rudimentary workflow (that could, if saved as an OS X Service, also be launched with a keyboard shortcut) and he immediately turned it into something awesome.

The Automator Workflow

This is the script of the workflow Bogdan came up with:

Automator Workflow Screenshot

You can download the Automator Workflow here (~59KB) (tested on OS X Yosemite 10.10.1).

Setting up the Service

  1. Download the Automator Workflow
  2. Unzip it and double-click on the resulting screencapture.workflow file
  3. In the dialog, select Install (except if you’d like to edit the script, then click on Open with Automator)
  4. It will be installed in your ~/Library/Services/ folder: Automator Service Path
  5. To confirm installation, in Finder, click on Finder in your menu bar, select Services and find Capture Screenshot to Yoink in the list: Service in Menu
  6. In your ~/Documents/ folder, create a folder titled Yoink (where captured screenshots will reside)

You have now successfully installed the Service to capture screenshots to Yoink. What you can do now is create a keyboard shortcut for it so you can more easily access this

Create a Keyboard Shortcut

  1. Launch System Preferences
  2. Click on Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services
  3. Find Capture Screenshot to Yoink in the list, under General:Screenshot System Preferences Keyboard Shortcuts
  4. Click on add shortcut and enter the shortcut you’d like to use to activate the service.

That’s It

That’s all there is to it. Now you can create screenshots that are then immediately available in Yoink for you to drag around.
If you find it useful, be sure to let me know on twitter (@eternalstorms) or by eMail – I’d appreciate the feedback!
Take care!

Update (October 14, 2015)

I got a bit of feedback on this – especially feedback from Pietro S. and Jeremy M. pushed me to update this post with a bit more information.
  • To make the Automator Script capture the entire display instead of just a selected portion, replace the line ‘ do shell script “screencapture -i ” & filePath ‘ with ‘do shell script “screencapture “ & filePath ‘ (removing the -i option to cause the selection)
  • Jeremy was so kind to provide an updated Automator Workflow that appended a date and timestamp to the screenshot’s filename; add two actions before the actual script (“Get Value of Variable”) with the variables Date and Timestamp and import them into the script – as in this screenshot:
    Screenshot of Automator, appending date and time to the filename
  • To use this Automator Workflow with the standard keyboard shortcut command-shift-4, you first have to deactivate the standard action in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Screen Shots, or assign it a different keyboard shortcut: Screenshot of System Preferences

A ‘thank you’ goes to Jeremy and Pietro for the updated workflows.

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useless error message

“Positive” Error Messages

For me, “positive” error messages are alerts that tell you something “failed” because the user has already done it before and so there’s no use in doing it again.

Like in the example screenshot above. The user added, at some point in history, a photo to their favorites. Now they stumble upon this photo again in some user’s photo stream and add it to their favorites again. And this error pops up, telling them they’re an idiot for not remembering it’s in their favorites already.

Necessity of Feedback

Giving the user feedback on what they do is very important, no argument there. But you have to be careful not to cross the line from giving helpful feedback to just being outright obnoxious or worse, unnecessarily interrupt the user’s workflow.

Alert panels are a good way of telling the user something went wrong when it needs their (immediate) attention. But halting the application to tell the user something has already been successfully done – what’s the use in that?

Example: flickery

flickery is the app where I run into this most often. “Photo already in favorites”. “Already in Group”. “Already in Set”. “Already in Gallery”. “Already member of the group”. etc.

Early versions of flickery did have these alerts in them. Actually, I hadn’t given it much thought at the time. But using the app a lot myself it quickly became clear to me that it’s just plain annoying.

flickery does have a “flying” animation when adding photos to favorites, sets, groups and galleries. Isn’t that all the feedback necessary in that case?
The user is informed something happened and that’s what counts. And if it’s already in there – who cares? Putting it in there was the point all along.

I do the same thing in ScreenFloat. When you add a shot to a category and it’s already in there, you won’t see an error panel telling the user it’s already in there. That was what they wanted anyway.

So, what’s the point?

Short and simple: avoid alerts, if you can.

They disrupt the flow of the app and take the user away from what they’re currently doing. There are many better ways to let the user know something happened – especially if it’s positive feedback.

[twitter-follow screen_name=’eternalstorms’ show_count=’yes’]

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