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automator quickaction speed

hi,

Is there anyway to speed up an automator quickaction sequence.

It take 10 seconds plus after I hit the assigned keyboard shortcut key for the quickaction to start the sequence, which is absolutely ridiculous, there is just no way the mac needs that much time to understand that the shortcut means the launch of the sequence.

What am I doing wrong?

thanks

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 3, 2020 8:13 AM

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8 replies

Oct 3, 2020 9:09 AM in response to superslowjammer

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail

Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community  


What Qhickaction sequence are you referring to? Include a screenshot of the Automator window.


What are you trying to accomplish with it? Where are the files located that you're trying to affect (if that's the case)? What Mac model do you have? How much RAM? What type of drive? Give us something to work with.

Oct 7, 2020 9:23 AM in response to superslowjammer

Boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and verify that the Screenshot setting are what you want and then test the Automator action.  Reboot normally and test again.


NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following; 
• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party extensions from loading)
• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts 
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files



Oct 3, 2020 1:38 PM in response to Old Toad

ok well good news and bad news


good news

  • somehow it is now much faster (3-4seconds to the pop-up) but...


bad news

  • it seems that it just became faster on its own, i.e. changing the thumbnail setting doesn't do anything on my side (and I actually would prefer to keep the thumbnail functionality for other purposes, so that fix does not work for me)
  • I still don't get why the pop-up asking me to select an area shows up at all, it's just a nuisance, but ok it seems there is no way around it
  • I also still don't get why the quickaction call to screenshot takes 3-4 secs to begin with when the native macos screenshot shortcut is basically instantaneous... something doesn't jive though...


best news

  • it's fast enough at this point, that I can't be bothered to improve it beyond that


Thanks again... I am reluctant to say that your responses 'solved my question' because I am not sure that someone else would see the same results that seem to be unrelated, but I am happy to do so, if you somehow benefit from that... let me know

Oct 3, 2020 12:38 PM in response to Old Toad


Hi thanks for your response and please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I have included a snapshot of the sequence. I am on Catalina 10.15.7 - The convert to TXT functionality is provided by FineReader 12


Basically my 2 problems are:

1- for the screenshot pop-up to finally show up, it takes easily 10-15s plus

2- I don't need the screenshot pop-up to begin with as it provides zero value, I would much rather have it go directly to crosshair (I started another thread for that particular problem as I thought the issues were not related)


Thanks very much for your time

Oct 3, 2020 1:17 PM in response to Old Toad

wow ok... I think I see my first problem right there, how can I see the 'Settings' you have shown on your screenshot, I have none of that... I have tried to go through all the automator menus and right click everything to no avail... if I could just figure out how to see these settings, you probably made my day right there.

thanks again

Oct 7, 2020 6:58 AM in response to superslowjammer

actually, it's now back to super slow mode... in fact so slow that the 2 second 'pause' I included in the workflow to ensure that the textedit file was indeed open, is not sufficient... (I had included 1 second in the past, and that worked for a little while... should I just put 3000000s to be on the safe side... this is just ridiculous... I mean we ARE in 2020, no?)


there is definitely something wrong here, thanks for any help

automator quickaction speed

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