When an action appears

Each time you open a menu or press a shortcut, MacScout checks every custom action against the current selection. An action appears only if all of these hold:

1. It is enabled. "enabled": false hides it.
2. Something is selected, or it allows an empty selection. With nothing selected, only actions with "background": true appear, and only when a folder is open. The other rules don't apply in that case.
3. The selection has the right size. At least minSelection items and at most maxSelection items, where set.
4. Every selected item matches. One item that doesn't match hides the action for the whole selection.

Matching an itemCopy Anchor Link

A folder matches if folders is true. When you don't set folders, it is true for actions without extensions or types, and false for actions with them. A filter for image files shouldn't show up for folders, and doesn't.

A file matches if files isn't false, and:

• its extension is in extensions, if you set extensions. Write extensions without the dot. "PNG" and "png" both match photo.png.
• its type is one of the types, or a more specific type of one, if you set types.

extensions and types can be combined. A file then has to pass both.

TypesCopy Anchor Link

types takes Uniform Type Identifiers. A file matches a type when its own type is that type or conforms to it, so "public.image" covers JPEG, PNG, HEIC and every other image format. Some useful ones:

To see a file's type and everything it conforms to, run:

mdls -name kMDItemContentType -name kMDItemContentTypeTree "file.heic"

ExamplesCopy Anchor Link

Images only:

{ "title": "Optimize", "command": "…", "types": ["public.image"] }

Exactly two files, no folders:

{ "title": "Compare", "command": "diff -u {files}", "output": "show", "minSelection": 2, "maxSelection": 2, "folders": false }

Folders only:

{ "title": "Folder Size", "command": "du -sh {files}", "files": false, "folders": true, "output": "show" }

Only on empty space in a folder. background adds the action for an empty selection, and "maxSelection": 0 removes it for any selection:

{ "title": "New README", "command": "…", "background": true, "maxSelection": 0 }

Any selection, and empty space too:

{ "title": "Back Up", "command": "~/bin/backup {files}", "background": true }

The Home viewCopy Anchor Link

Home shows your drives and recent files rather than a folder, so there is no open folder there. Actions with "background": true don't appear on its empty space. When you right-click a recent file, {folder} is the folder that contains it. From the Actions menu or a shortcut, {folder} is empty.