AppleScript for Quicken
mybank2002
Member ✭✭✭✭
Will Quicken ever bring back AppleScript, I would love to be able to script and automate some things to speed up reconcile process and jumping to certain accounts and fields.
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Answers
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I doubt it. I use Keyboard Maestro extensively to automate certain functions within Quicken to make things easier. For example, I use KM to open certain account registers via a keyboard shortcut. Hint: use KM's screen image location ability to anchor the cursor position selection. If you are comfortable programming in AppleScript, then you should be able to pretty easily learn KM, a very powerful tool.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0
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Hello @mybank2002,
Thank you for coming to the Community with your question!
You can always create an Idea Post for this. The link given will take you there, thanks!
Quicken Alyssa
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Apple itself has been showing AppleScript very little love in recent years. While they haven't killed AppleScript, it is clearly not what they view as the future of automation and scripting on the Mac.
AppleScript was created for System 7 Apple, way back in the "classic" operating system era before the Unix-based Mac OS X rebooted the future of Mac programming. About 5 years ago, Apple disbanded its automation team and axed the product manager who headed it for 19 years. Apple has brought forward several other automation technologies over the years, including Automator and Configurator, But the arrival of Apple's Swift programming language, Shortcuts to replace Automator, and the widespread use of Javascript all signal the eventual end of AppleScript. AppleScript was created before iOS, and importantly, doesn't work in that environment; Apple Events don't exist in iOS. It's clear Apple is trying to merge iOS and macOS wherever it can, and to make it easy for applications to move easily between the two operating systems. And the relentless push for tighter security mean that modern scripting tools, like Swift Playgrounds, not AppleScript, are the future. Apple hasn't fully laid out the future of scripting on the Mac, but it has made clear AppleScript isn't it.
For these reasons, it makes little sense for the Quicken Mac development team to invest considerable time in building significant AppleScript support into Quicken after all these years.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Yes, I am comfortable doing this and have them all assigned to each account. It is less accurate and a bit slower than built in AppleScript though. Screen images seem to do better for this than anchoring to the corner though since I use Quicken through a sync on different computers.RickO said:I doubt it. I use Keyboard Maestro extensively to automate certain functions within Quicken to make things easier. For example, I use KM to open certain account registers via a keyboard shortcut. Hint: use KM's screen image location ability to anchor the cursor position selection. If you are comfortable programming in AppleScript, then you should be able to pretty easily learn KM, a very powerful tool.
It would be neat to see the different things you have programmed using Keyboard Maestro. I am sure some ideas would be sparked for me.
Yup I was sad to see Sal go and I shared a lot of your sentiments and with Shortcuts on the Mac you are right I can see they are trying to implement other things. Sad thing is nothing has even come close to what AppleScript can do. Automator was cool and tried to bring automation to even more people like AppleScript originally intended to do.jacobs said:
For these reasons, it makes little sense for the Quicken Mac development team to invest considerable time in building significant AppleScript support into Quicken after all these years.
You might recall that with I think Mavericks Apple did show love to AppleScript allowing it to integrate more tightly into code and have more access to apps and code. I do understand your point though and basically anyway to get under the hood a bit more or even allow end users to create more shortcuts to different things would be great by putting more drop down menus to things users create would help a great deal.
That way we can program our own shortcuts with other apps and grab aspects of the application that show up in menus rather than silly hacks I am currently doing to try to achieve the same thing with less than consistent results.
Thank you all for your comments and help.1 -
I've been asking the same question today. A post on Ask Different[1] mentions a Javascript alternative that Apple appears to be toying with. Several years ago, they did MacRuby[2] but that seems to have been abandoned.
I'm going to check out Keyboard Maestro.
[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/281092/applescript-alternatives
[2] http://macruby.org
p.s. I've seen people able to create links (I think) but I don't see how to do that1 -
I have posted my KM macros in the KM forum (with a current update) here: https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/quicken-2017-for-mac-macros/7985
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1 -
Thank you everyone for your thoughtful replies and help.0
This discussion has been closed.