Syncing iCloud Text Shortcuts to Snippets

[henrik]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm already using many text shortcuts that you can set on your Mac or iPhone via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text. It's great because it syncs to all of your devices (something Alfred doesn't do since it's not made for phones). However, the shortcuts don't work everywhere (e.g. address bar in Chrome) and they don't have the immediate expansion that Alfred has (you have to press spacebar or select it).

 

Do you think there would be a way to sync the iCloud text shortcuts to a snippet collection?

 

All the best,

Henrik

[deanishe]

11 minutes ago, henrik said:

something Alfred doesn't do since it's not made for phones

 

That's not the reason. It's not possible to build a snippet expansion app for iOS due to the way the system works.

 

12 minutes ago, henrik said:

Do you think there would be a way to sync the iCloud text shortcuts to a snippet collection?

 

It might be possible. Do you know where the system snippets are stored?

[henrik]

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

23 minutes ago, deanishe said:

It might be possible. Do you know where the system snippets are stored?

 

They are stored under /Users/henrik/Library/KeyboardServices/TextReplacements.db. Does that help?

[deanishe]

1 hour ago, henrik said:

Does that help?

 

Yup, thanks. Here's a script to sync your macOS text shortcuts to Alfred snippets.

[henrik]

Thank you so much for this deanishe!

I can't get it to work, though.. I'm fairly new to workflows but shouldn't it work like this (when I press the shortcut):

 

 

[deanishe]

Sorry @henrik, I missed your reply.

 

It isn’t a workflow script, it’s a command-line script (I figured most people would want to run it automatically via a Launch Agent).

 

If you read the post, you’ll see you have to set the SNIPPET_DIR environment variable to the path to your Alfred snippets directory. You can also set SNIPPET_DIR as a workflow variable, but if you don’t set it, the snippets will just be saved in the workflow folder, which is useless. If you're running the script from a workflow, you can probably set SNIPPET_DIR to ../../snippets.

 

[paulw]

@deanishe this is really cool!

 

Do you think it would be feasible to make it a two-way sync by adding Alfred snippets (perhaps only ones with a particular tag) to ~/Library/KeyboardServices/TextReplacements.db with SQLite queries?

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, paulw said:

Do you think it would be feasible to make it a two-way sync

 

No. Changing the SQLite database is a bad idea:

 

Quote

Although Core Data supports SQLite as a store type, the store format—like those of the other native Core Data stores—is private. You cannot create a SQLite database using the native SQLite API and use it directly with Core Data, nor should you manipulate an existing Core Data SQLite store using native SQLite API.

 

 

[dfay]

I haven't touched this in years but here is how I got my TE snippets into MacOS:

 

https://github.com/derickfay/snipcon-OSX

 

You could use Hazel as I do here

 but have it output the .plists and import them 

[paulw]

Thanks, @deanishe. And Thanks, @dfay, I'll look into this option, since I do have Hazel.

[paulw]

@deanishe, reviving this thread to ask about your snippets syncing Python script. I have a couple of MacOS keyboard shortcuts that have multi-line text. The script seems to flatten them into a single line. Do you think it would be an easy fix to get the script to respect new lines?

[deanishe]

On 9/29/2021 at 2:51 AM, paulw said:

Do you think it would be an easy fix to get the script to respect new lines?

 

Fixed. Grab the script again from the same URL.

[paulw]

Thanks! By the way, I did a file comparison between the old and new versions, and you changed export_shortcuts to export_shorcuts. Doesn't seem to be a problem, since it's consistent, but just thought I'd let you know 🤓 Never mind, had that completely backwards. Thanks for your very useful script!

Edited September 30, 2021 by paulw

[andy4222]

On 12/13/2020 at 11:08 AM, paulw said:

since I do have Hazel.

@paulw Did you get to using hazel to auto sync this when a new snippet is added? Would it be possible to share your hazel rule? I couldn't get it to work

 

EDIT: was also thinking it there's a way to backup existing snippets before overwriting them in alfred

Edited November 23, 2021 by andy4222

[andy4222]

On 9/30/2021 at 12:39 AM, deanishe said:

 

Fixed. Grab the script again from the same URL.

Is there a way to get confirmation from the script that it successfully ran so we can post notification about the success or error?

[deanishe]

27 minutes ago, andy4222 said:

Is there a way to get confirmation from the script that it successfully ran so we can post notification about the success or error?

 

It's a standard POSIX script. If it failed, it exits with a non-zero status, and it logs what it's doing to STDERR. Wire it up however you want.

[andy4222]

21 minutes ago, deanishe said:

 

It's a standard POSIX script. If it failed, it exits with a non-zero status, and it logs what it's doing to STDERR. Wire it up however you want.

 

I tried putting in the invalid directory path and it didn't log an error. How do I fetch/return stderr from the script

 

PS: not a developer, just play with this stuff

 

 

[deanishe]

1 minute ago, andy4222 said:

the invalid directory path

 

What does that mean? A path that isn't your snippets folder or an actually invalid path (illegal name, directory you can't write to, etc.)?

 

The script doesn't care about the former. If it can write to the path you give it, it will. It's your job to make sure it's pointing at your snippets directory.

 

4 minutes ago, andy4222 said:

How do I fetch/return stderr from the script

 

That depends on how you're running the script, which you haven't told us.

[andy4222]

7 minutes ago, deanishe said:

 

What does that mean? A path that isn't your snippets folder or an actually invalid path (illegal name, directory you can't write to, etc.)?

 

The script doesn't care about the former. If it can write to the path you give it, it will. It's your job to make sure it's pointing at your snippets directory.

 

 

That depends on how you're running the script, which you haven't told us.

 

 

SNIPPET_DIR = '<setting wrong path here'

 

7 minutes ago, deanishe said:

 

What does that mean? A path that isn't your snippets folder or an actually invalid path (illegal name, directory you can't write to, etc.)?

 

The script doesn't care about the former. If it can write to the path you give it, it will. It's your job to make sure it's pointing at your snippets directory.

 

 

That depends on how you're running the script, which you haven't told us.

 

My bad. I am using run script for this. Run script is just a copy paste of your script with paths changed to my alfred's snippet directory

 

 

Edited November 26, 2021 by andy4222

[deanishe]

13 minutes ago, andy4222 said:

SNIPPET_DIR = '<setting wrong path here'

 

That’s a perfectly valid path. Your workflow directory presumably now contains a directory called <setting wrong path here full of snippets.

 

13 minutes ago, andy4222 said:

Run script is just a copy paste of your script with paths changed to my alfred's snippet directory

 

Then use Alfred's debugger to see what the script is doing, like with any other workflow.

 

Alfred doesn't care if a Run Script fails or not, only whether its output is valid, so if you want your workflow to behave differently if the script fails, you'll need to call the Python script from a bash wrapper or similar.

Edited November 26, 2021 by deanishe

[andy4222]

This code snippet (to sync Apple and Alfred snippets) doesn't seem to be working after python3 upgrade. @deanisheCould you please help us fix this.

Edited May 22, 2022 by andy4222

[TomBenz]

On 5/23/2022 at 12:27 AM, andy4222 said:

This code snippet (to sync Apple and Alfred snippets) doesn't seem to be working after python3 upgrade. @deanisheCould you please help us fix this.

Any update on this? It will be great if workflow file can be posted as well

[TomBenz]

On 8/21/2020 at 11:31 PM, deanishe said:

Sorry @henrik, I missed your reply.

 

It isn’t a workflow script, it’s a command-line script (I figured most people would want to run it automatically via a Launch Agent).

 

If you read the post, you’ll see you have to set the SNIPPET_DIR environment variable to the path to your Alfred snippets directory. You can also set SNIPPET_DIR as a workflow variable, but if you don’t set it, the snippets will just be saved in the workflow folder, which is useless. If you're running the script from a workflow, you can probably set SNIPPET_DIR to ../../snippets.

 

@deanishe thanks for script to copy macOS text shortcuts to Snippets. How we do set environment variables above? In python code, 

 

def export_shortcuts(shortcuts, dirpath):
    """Save macOS shortcuts to directory as Alfred snippets."""
    log('exporting snippets to %r ...', dirpath)
    if not os.path.exists(dirpath):
        os.makedirs(dirpath, 0700)

 

what does 0700 means in the line above? Is it possible to use AppleScript instead of Python to achieve this one way sync?