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bashautomatormacos-montereyquickaction

Automator Quick Action Only Runs in Automator and not in Finder Quick Action Menu


I have an Automator Quick Action (QA) which calls a bash script to act on files within a specified folder. It works great when run inside Automator. But invoking the Quick Action from Finder by right clicking on the input folder does nothing with no errors or log files (as far as I can tell). screenshot of Automator code at link. My first bash code, and first question on stack-overflow - thanks to anyone in advance who might be able to assist. Apple silicon mackbook pro; running Mac OS 12.4.

Additional Info: The QA gets a selected folder and passes it to the bash shell script via "$a" argument. The selected folder will contain text files (.SRT) and movie files (.MP4). The bash script does some text parsing and passes on arguments to the Exiftool program which adds GPS metadata to the movie files.

Workaround found: I was able to import the automator workflow into the Mac OS Shortcuts App and the automation ran successfully via a menu bar command on my Mac.


Solution

  • I had the same issue for a long time trying to invoke a python program from bash shell script using quick action. It runs with no error in the editor and would run only if I left the workflow open all of the time in Automator. I eventually stumbled across a permission issue with Automator itself. I hope this could help you maybe?:

    1 - Go "System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy"

    2 - Select "Accessibility" from the left-hand menu.

    3 - Unlock to make changes, if necessary, then click the "+" sign at the bottom of the right-hand menu.

    4 - Add "Automator" as a trusted app.

    Hope it helps!