Hello,
I love the Facebook feature "On this Day" but would love to have it on my mac rather than upload my entire photo collection to FB for this to work year on year etc. Does anybody know how to replicate this through scripting, 3rd party app etc?
Crumbs I meant to credit your post and instead credited my own flipping entry... Is there a way I can undo? If not thank you for your help. Léonie
I just noticed, the 1st of December is also not found, if I simply set the the day and the month manually.
When I change the script to first create a date object, and then change the day and month field in the date object, this date is found as well:
You may want to try this modification:
-- find all photos taken on a certain day, for example the day of the current date.
-- the resulting photos will be added to a toplevel album named "On day month".
set thisdate to the (current date) as date -- create a date object
set the month of thisdate to 12 -- change this to the month you want, for example
set the day of thisdate to 1 -- change this to the day you want, for example "25"
set thisday to the day of (thisdate as date)
set thismonth to the month of (thisdate as date)
--return {thisday, this month} -- just testing
set thisDayAlbum to "On " & thismonth & " " & thisday as string
tell application "Photos"
try
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
set thePhotosBuffer to containerthisDayAlbum
else
makealbumnamedthisDayAlbum
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Cannot open album: " & thisDayAlbum & " " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
return
end try
set onthisdayFound to {}
set onthisdaySkipped to {}
set allTheItems to every media item-- get a list of all photos and videos, may take a while
-- add all photos taken this day to the album
repeat with i from 1 to the count of allTheItems
-- check the dates of all photos and videos
set thisMediaItem to itemi of allTheItems
try
set date_i to the date of thisMediaItem
set day_i to the day of (date_i as date)
set month_i to the month of (date_i as date)
if ((day_i = thisday) and (month_i = thismonth)) then
set end of onthisdayFound to thisMediaItem
add {thisMediaItem} tocontainerthisDayAlbum
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
set end of onthisdaySkipped to thisMediaItem
end try
end repeat
end tell
set theresultmessage to "Found " & (the count of onthisdayFound) & " items and added them to the album " & thisDayAlbum & ".
Skipped " & (the count of onthisdaySkipped) & " items without date"
display dialogtheresultmessage
Yep thats works a treat.
Thanks.
You're welcome 🙂
Programming with the class "Date" is always a fight, because AppleScript has no date constructor that is working independent of the localization.
One other quick question:
tell application "Photos"
try
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
delete (every item of folder (thisDayAlbum))
How do I get the "On This Day" Album emptied so each day it simply refreshes with the current days data?
How do I get the "On This Day" Album emptied so each day it simply refreshes with the current days data?
You don't have to because the album is created with the date selected:
So just change the date, run it, change the date, run it, etc., etc., etc.
By creating an "On This Day Album" I can set the screensaver to use the contents each day. Thus I would like to remove yesterday's files and insert todays files, instead of creating new albums every day etc
Thus I would like to remove yesterday's files and insert todays files, instead of creating new albums every day etc.
Just delete the previous on this day album. That way the date is indicated on the album for reference.
I could do that, but I guess part of this process is to remove as many manual steps as possible... Léonie has answered my initial question, I am now just pushing the scope a bit ;-)
I could do that, but I guess part of this process is to remove as many manual steps as possible.
Count the steps to launch Script Editor, edit the script, save, close Script Editor and run against Control (right) - clicking on the smart album, edit the setting and saving.
I would simply ctrl-click the album in Photos sidebar and select "Delete Album" from the pop-up menu before you run the script. It will delete the album, but keep your photos in the library.
If you want to start with an empty album and include this deletion into the script, do it this way:
If the album exists, delete it, then recreate it unconditionally. This way the script will always start with an empty album.
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
delete the containerthisDayAlbum
end if
makealbumnamedthisDayAlbum
The script will now look like this:
------------------------------------------------------------
set thisdate to the (current date) as date-- create a date object
set the month of thisdate to 12 -- change this to the month you want, for example "12"
set the day of thisdate to 1 -- change this to the day you want, for example "1"
set thisday to the day of (thisdate as date)
set thismonth to the month of (thisdate as date)
--return {thisday, thismonth}
set thisDayAlbum to "On " & thismonth & " " & thisday as string
tell application "Photos"
try
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
delete the containerthisDayAlbum
end if
makealbumnamedthisDayAlbum
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Cannot create album: " & thisDayAlbum & " " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
return
end try
set onthisdayFound to {}
set onthisdaySkipped to {}
set allTheItems to every media item-- get a list of all photos and videos, may take a while
-- add all photos taken this day to the album
repeat with i from 1 to the count of allTheItems
-- check the dates of all photos and videos
set thisMediaItem to itemi of allTheItems
try
set date_i to the date of thisMediaItem
set day_i to the day of (date_i as date)
set month_i to the month of (date_i as date)
if ((day_i = thisday) and (month_i = thismonth)) then
set end of onthisdayFound to thisMediaItem
add {thisMediaItem} tocontainerthisDayAlbum
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
set end of onthisdaySkipped to thisMediaItem
end try
end repeat
end tell
set theresultmessage to "Found " & (the count of onthisdayFound) & " items and added them to the album " & thisDayAlbum & ".
Skipped " & (the count of onthisdaySkipped) & " items without date"
display dialogtheresultmessage
If you are seeing an alert "Apple event timed out", you may not have responded to the dialog panel. This can happen, if the panel is hidden behind other windows.
Come to thing about it, I would insert a line "delay 2" after the deletion of the album. This will avoid timeout errors, if Photos needs bit longer to delete the album.
try
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
delete the containerthisDayAlbum
delay 2 -- second try after delay
end if
makealbumnamedthisDayAlbum-- create a new, empty album
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Cannot create album: " & thisDayAlbum & " " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
return
end try
Yep That's the ticket.
My final script is this:
set thisdate to the (current date) as date
-- create a date object
set thisday to the day of (thisdate as date)
set thismonth to the month of (thisdate as date)
-- return {thisday, this month}
set thisDayAlbum to "On This Day"
-- create an Album called On This Day
tell application "Photos"
try
if existscontainerthisDayAlbum then
delete the containerthisDayAlbum
delay 2 -- second try after delay
end if
makealbumnamedthisDayAlbum-- create a new, empty album
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Cannot create album: " & thisDayAlbum & " " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
return
end try
set onthisdayFound to {}
set onthisdaySkipped to {}
set allTheItems to every media item
-- get a list of all photos and videos, may take a while
-- add all photos taken this day to the album
repeat with i from 1 to the count of allTheItems
-- check the dates of all photos and videos
set thisMediaItem to itemi of allTheItems
try
set date_i to the date of thisMediaItem
set day_i to the day of (date_i as date)
set month_i to the month of (date_i as date)
if ((day_i = thisday) and (month_i = thismonth)) then
set end of onthisdayFound to thisMediaItem
add {thisMediaItem} tocontainerthisDayAlbum
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
set end of onthisdaySkipped to thisMediaItem
end try
end repeat
end tell
set theresultmessage to "Found " & (the count of onthisdayFound) & " items and added them to the album " & thisDayAlbum & ".
Skipped " & (the count of onthisdaySkipped) & " items without date"
display dialogtheresultmessage
I have set this to run every morning.
The result is at breakfast, provided there are actually photos present, we can all watch the screen saver which will take pics from the "On This Day" Album... AWESOME thanks so much to you all for helping out.
Now next steps, show the Location, Dates, and possibly the peoples names, garnered from the "faces" in each picture during a slide show...
Great idea to have this as a screensaver 🙂
Now next steps, show the Location, Dates, and possibly the peoples names, garnered from the "faces" in each picture during a slide show...
That part is not yet scriptable in Photos.
You can help by sending feedback to Apple, to add more scripting support to Photos, and make the slideshow themes more vrsatile. Previously it was possible to use the metadata of the photos in the screensaver or in aslideshow, but that is not possible in Photos.
The feedback form is here: Apple - Photos - Feedback
You could file a feature reqest or usability problem.
"On This Day" Feature for mac Photos, does it exist?
