Trigger Applescript on application exit?

Question

Level 2

460 points

Trigger Applescript on application exit?

Is it possible to launch an Applescript upon closing out of a separate application?

I play World of Warcraft and it erases my Expose settings each time. (See discussion about this problem here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5709379#5709379) Fortunately, someone has written a script that automatically returns the settings back to their defaults. The annoying thing is I have to run it each time manually and sometimes I forget.

Any way to get a script to watch World of Warcraft.app and trigger when the app closes?

Thanks.

MacBook Pro 15", Mac OS X (10.5.1), 2 GB RAM

Posted on Jan 27, 2008 6:53 PM

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Answer 1

red_menace

Level 6

17,036 points

Jan 27, 2008 7:38 PM in response to Philpott

There isn't any trigger when an application quits, but you can run a stay-open script that checks to see if a process is running or not. For example, the following script will run the application and then check every five minutes to see if it is still running (save is as a stay-open application):

<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFDDFF;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
property LookTime : 5 * 60 -- interval to check process

on run
tell application "World Of Warcraft" to activate -- start it up
delay LookTime -- initial delay before idle
end run

on idle
tell application "System Events"
if (exists application process "World of Warcraft") then return LookTime -- check again later
end tell
-- application is not running, so run script here
quit
end idle
</pre>

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Answer 2

Jan 28, 2008 9:51 AM in response to Philpott

You might consider "Do Something When" it can run an applescript application when you launch/quit an application or mount/unmount a drive.

http://www.azarhi.com/Projects/DSW/

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Answer 3

Philpott Author

Level 2

460 points

Jan 28, 2008 2:23 PM in response to Paul Courtade

Thank you both for your responses. I'm a total Applescript novice, so I'll take the advice to use DSW; I just installed it and it is perfect. Thank you!

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Answer 4

Apr 25, 2008 7:57 AM in response to Philpott

Hi everyone,
I've tried this program and so far it hasn't worked. It doesn't seem to do anything as far as I can tell. I have a real need for an applescript to run automatically when MSWord quits. I tried setting it for another application too just as a test, and it didn't work either. The applescript runs by itself just fine. Any ideas or is there another program (or script) that can do this? Thanks,
Sean

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