When you’re automating something, sometimes you run into a roadblock. On iOS, that roadblock is often impassable, though that happens less often now than back in the day. On macOS, there’s usually a way around if you know the tricks.

Yesterday (and I swear this is not going to turn into yet another post about that podcast note script Dan and I keep bashing around) I decided that there was a feature I could more easily implement in Shortcuts… but that meant that I would need to abandon my original AppleScript script and change how I was kicking off my automations by pressing a button on a Stream Deck.

The current Stream Deck plugin for Shortcuts doesn’t let you pass input on to the Shortcut, which is how I pass text to my note script. So I had to find another way. I ended up using the Run OSA Script Stream Deck plugin to activate my shortcut… via AppleScript.

This is what I mean by getting around roadblocks.

One of the many ways you can activate Shortcuts on the Mac involves using a system app provided by Apple called Shortcuts Events. Shortcuts Events is completely invisible, and always available. It lets you run shortcuts from any AppleScript script, without launching the Shortcuts app.…