FastScripts is one of Red Sweater’s most beloved, albeit niche, apps. The Mac-based scripting utility adds a menu bar icon for running scripts, and supports attaching keyboard shortcuts to them. Like many customers, I’ve been running it on my Mac literally every day for … seemingly forever.
Although the app has been continuously developed over the past twenty years or so, and has received many updates, it’s been a long time since I released a major upgrade. I went looking through the Red Sweater Blog archives to try to discover when FastScripts 2.0 shipped, and I couldn’t find a post. Why? It shipped before 2005, the year when this blog debuted. I had to resort to searching my email archives, where I discovered that FastScripts 2.0 was released on June 10, 2004. That release inroduced keyboard shortcuts and a number of new preferences to the app.
Over the years I’ve had a lot of ideas about how FastScripts might evolve, and have worked on new features intermittently. As part of my recent decision to reinvest in Red Sweater, I decided to focus on finally shipping some of those features in a major 3.0 upgrade. Today, I’d like to share what I’ve got so far, as a public beta:
Download FastScripts 3.0 Beta
(Free of charge until public release – Requires macOS 10.14.6 or later)
The major changes in this upgrade are the introduction of a search feature so you can easily sift through all the scripts in the menu, and a major overhaul to the way scripts are executed so that multiple scripts can be fired off in rapid succession without interfering with one another. The upgrade also includes a number of other changes. Here’s the complete list:
FastScripts is a powerful tool for running time-saving scripts on your Mac, designed for seamless integration with the apps you use on a daily basis. FastScripts focuses on running your AppleScript and shell scripts as quickly as possible, without taking you out of the context you are working in. SIGN IN Already have a FastTranscripts.com account? Copyright ©2012-2021 Fast Transcripts LLC. All rights reserved.
- Scriptlight: quickly search your scripts from the FastScripts menu
- Currently matches based on script title, may expand to match content
- Scripts are always run in a separate process
- Low latency execution by priming script running process
- No limit to running simultaneous scripts
- Scripts can’t “hang up” the main app or cause it to crash
- FastScripts scripting changes
- New “open web page” command streamlines visiting favorite URLs in whatever browser is active
- FastScripts’s own hierarchies of scripts are now described as “script collections”
- Improved the layout of text in the “display message” message panels
- Other improvements
- Conflicts are now detected when setting keyboard shortcuts for scripts
- Keyboard shortcuts are now disabled while editing a script’s keyboard shortcut
- Symbolic links are now supported in script folder hierarchies
Apart from the changes listed above, I hope to soon offer the ability to monitor and cancel long-running scripts are launched from FastScripts.
Fastscripts Transcript
This upgrade will address a lot of of minor usability limitations of FastScripts 2 while also setting the groundwork for continued evolution of the app going forward. If you run scripts on your Mac, I hope you’ll consider giving it a try!
Hey folks! Many of you are already familiar with my scripting utility, FastScripts. I have been working on a pretty substantial 3.0 upgrade to the app.
Fastscripts Prescriptions
While I’m not ready to go fully public with the beta yet, I thought it would be good to share it here. I know many of you who do use it are among my most technical users and also push the app to do remarkable things ;p I am hoping you’ll help me by installing the beta and letting me know if anything major is broken. Hopefully you’ll also start to enjoy the new features immediately and get to enjoy them before most of the world.
The main new features of 3.0 are:
Scriptlight: quickly search for scripts from right in the FastScripts menu
Scripts always run in separate processes, empowering parallel script-running and protecting the main app from issues arising from a badly behaving script.
Lots of little fixes such as detecting when a conflicting shortcut is being set, additions to FastScripts’s own scripting dictionary, and more.
If you’d like to give it a spin, please download it here:
As long as you’re running the beta version you should be offered updates to future beta revisions, and to the final release when it’s ready. The beta versions are free for all to use, but the final release will be a paid upgrade for most users.
Thanks for giving it a try, and let me know what you think!
Fastscripts Review
Daniel