Asphyxiation by Oxygen Hands| #OS X

Syncing Mail.app Signatures in OS X Lion1330544700

These days, people are mad about syncing stuff. They put whatever they can in the cloud, access it and modify from different devices and go “oooh magic”.

It is cool, I have to admit. And quite useful too, sometimes. One could argue this is mostly Apple’s fault. MobileMe, as broken as it was, used to be the most amazing, unrealized dream: have all your user experience synced across different Macs with just a few clicks. Down to details as silly as dock icons and desktop picture. However, Apple decided to destroy it and build the service from scratch: enter iCloud. It seems to be much easier to work with, more reliable and bullet-proof. But the cost is a severely limited feature set in comparison to MobileMe. I miss Keychain syncing (I had to purchase the ugly 1Password), preferences syncing, dock icons syncing. And finally — which is the topic of this post — mail signatures syncing.

I use mail signatures quite extensively. I treat them as mail message templates and I have about 20 set up. Therefore lack of synchronization in this area is particularly painful to me. If you’re in the same boat, read on.

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Replacing app icons using Hazel1329961200

Here is another script I cooked up recently. I’m particularly proud of this one; it is quite clever and useful.

Use case (an edgy one, I’m sure): I use Max Rudberg’s Obsidian Menu Bar. It’s a lovely modification which basically makes OS X menu bar black. Max’s installer comes with quite a few icons for the most popular services and apps, but it doesn’t contain all of them. And I don’t want to bug the poor guy.

So I ended up creating this rule in Hazel:

Very simple, isn’t it? Whenever I want to customize an app, I add its name as a sub rule. And before I do that, I need to place customized resources in a special folder:

It is important that each application has its own folder, named EXACTLY after the app. See “Day One Agent” on top? That’s because Day One’s dev is a sneaky man: the app which has the menubar ribbon icon is actually buried within the main app’s package. A bit of an exception, which the AppleScript for processing icons handles perfectly. Here goes:

	-- Enter your OS X username and password for SmoothScriptOperation™.
	set _user to "yourosxusername"
	set _pass to "yourpassword"

	-- Set paths to your home folder and Applications folder.
	set _home to POSIX path of (path to home folder)
	set _apps to POSIX path of (path to applications folder)

	-- Set the folder where you keep app icons sorted into folders named JUST like your apps (minus .app extension of course).
	set _customizing to "Customizing/Apps/"

	-- You can use this for for testing purposes. Otherwise Hazel will pass the app into theFile variable.
	-- set theFile to (POSIX file _apps as text) & "Dropbox.app"

	-- Ask Finder figure out the name of the app and remove ".app" extension.
	tell application "Finder" to set _app to text 1 thru -5 of (get name of file theFile)

	-- A small exception for Day One app. You can add more.
	if _app is "Day One Agent" then
		set _pre to "Day One.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/"
	else
		set _pre to ""
	end if

	-- Define paths for script to operate on.
	set _appath to _apps & _pre & _app & ".app/Contents/Resources"
	set _respath to _home & _customizing & _app & "/"

	-- This is where the action happens. A script that quits the processed app and copies customized resources to where they should be.
try
	do shell script "killall " & quoted form of _app
end try

try
	do shell script "cp -R" & space & quoted form of _respath & space & quoted form of _appath user name _user password _pass with administrator privileges
end try

	-- Give'em a second to breathe…
	delay 1

	-- Relaunch the app.
	tell application _app to launch

	-- Display a Growl notification.
	tell application id "com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp"
		register as application "Hazel Notifications" all notifications {"Info", "Error"} default notifications {"Info", "Error"} icon of application "HazelHelper.app"
		notify with name "Info" title _app description "Icons replaced successfully." application name "Hazel Notifications" priority 0 icon of application _app
	end tell

You can use this to replace menubar icons, app icons, NIBs — whatever is in your application.app/Contents/Resources folder of choice. Of course as long as it doesn’t break the app. Make backups before playing!