CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosbuttonapplescripttoolbar
Henrik
Henrik

Reputation: 2591

How do you programmatically press a toolbar button with AppleScript?

I hope this isn't too obvious, but I'd like to press one of the toolbar buttons within an application by means of AppleScript.

Background: The button doesn't have any menu item or keyboard shortcut. Thus, I can't activate it by any of those methods; I need to find an AppleScript way of actually 'pressing' the button.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5089

Answers (3)

roberthuttinger
roberthuttinger

Reputation: 1194

I am going to expand a little on what @hced said.

I agree that click button 3 of tool bar 1 of window 1 works in many cases. However from OS to OS thic can be a moving target. My example is iTunes. In iTunes 10.5.8 the airplay button is 17 where in 10.7.5 it is 25. However, in both instances it is called "AirPlay"!

So I suggest using the developer kit, and getting this code from Apple: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/UIElementInspector/Introduction/Intro.html

Run the application and whatever you mouse over will get you all the info you need to make this work in your AppleScripts:

click (every button whose description is "AirPlay") of window "iTunes" of application process "iTunes"

In this case there should only be one button with this description, but you can use the tool to discover whether this is the case. If so, limit the scope!

Hope this helps!! Bo

Upvotes: 3

Henrik
Henrik

Reputation: 2591

Ah, figured out that one myself, too. Seems I'm on a self-commenting spree here.

This example worked for me, referencing a specific toolbar button by means of its description attribute:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "OmniFocus"
        click (every button whose description is "Contexts") of tool bar 1 of window 1
    end tell
end tell

I'll leave it up for any commenters with an opinion about referencing every button whose descripton is "Contexts" (as per my example), to express those down below. But I presume there can't be multiple buttons with the same description, right?

Upvotes: 4

Henrik
Henrik

Reputation: 2591

Ok, that was simpler than I thought, once I found out how. (Googling it didn't leave much help at all, but an application called Prefab UI Browser did the trick finding out how this is done).

Example:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "OmniFocus"
        click button 3 of tool bar 1 of window 1
    end tell
end tell

I've got a follow-up question, though:

How do you reference a toolbar button by name/description? I know for a fact that the button has a description attribute with the value: "Contexts". But again, how do I reference it in the click statement?

Upvotes: 2

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