In Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Services have been completely reinvented. Now more powerful, they are also streamlined to provide exceptional capability where you need it, when you need it.
Services in Mac OS X v10.6 are:
• Contextual: In Snow Leopard, only the services appropriate for working with the currently selected data appear in the Services menu. Select text in TextEdit, Safari, iChat, or even the Terminal application, and the active services for manipulating textual data are displayed. Select image files in the Finder, and only services for working with image files are displayed. Menu clutter and confusion are gone, you only see what services can assist you with now.
• Convenient: Services in Snow Leopard are accessible where you need them. Either from the Services sub-menu in the current Application menu, or the current application’s contextual menu. In the Finder, Services are displayed on the Action Menu in the Finder window toolbar. Services are available at the point-of-need. Right-click on a text selection in Safari, or an image file in the Finder, and appropriate services appear on their contextual menu.
• Configurable: All the services installed on your computer are listed by category in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse system preference pane. Enable or disable them to suit your needs. You can even assign a keystroke combination to your favorite ones, so activating their power only requires a quick keystroke!
• Customizable: Got a multi-step process you want to simplify? Create your own service using Automator! It’s newly streamlined interface works with Data Detectors to make it easy to identify what kind of information or file you want to process. Then complete your automation recipe with Automator’s easy drag-and-drop process of adding actions for each step of what you want to do. Save your workflow, and it will automatically appear as a new service in the Services menu and application contextual menu.
Apple offers free downloadable Services, categorized and grouped by color, here.
Cool!
The Services feature of OS X has always been sorely neglected but has tremendous potential. It’s good to see Apple start taking it seriously.
Yup, the rewriting of the services has been so far the feature I like best in SN. Too bad they’re not accessible from the Menubar as I find difficult to remember all the shortcuts.
My Snow Leopard arrives tomorrow, is there finally a service for CaseChange on text?
The freely downloadable Services, categorized and grouped by color, does not appear to be from Apple.
Casechange and other word services are available as a download from Devon-technologies.com
Convenient?
NOT
I just selected some text in this Safari window and right-clicked to only see options of “Search with Google”, “Look in Dictionary”, “Copy”.
Whereas if you go to the menu Safari -> Services you get additional options such as “Make New Sticky Note”, “New E-Mail With Selection”
Why do these options show up in the menubar, but not in the righ-click contextual menu?
I tried to download and install the Finder Services package. The installer ran, but nothing was installed.
Might want to namecheck MacBreak on this – unless those 4 C’s are a standard phrase! their recent episode with Alex Lindsay went over this, but doesn’t seem linked.
Hi MDN,
RE: iPhone Tethering in new iPhone 3,0 software?
I just found about this. Is it true? I have not tested it.
Perhaps you can post it for other readers to find out?
Here’s the link:
http://www.cellphonesmarket.com/news/easy-tether-iphone-3g/
– Donald
RE: Missing services. Some default services might be “missing” on contextual menus. However, they can reset to appear. Try toggling their status in the Services Preferences pane and then typing the following in the Terminal:
/System/Library/CoreServices/pbs flush
Log out and log back in and they should appear.
RE: Finder Services. Look in the Services folder in the top-level Library folder. Are the Finder services in there?
RE: Finder Services. Download the installer again and run. Services should show up now.
This certainly is awesome that Apple is refining the experience with the Services. It’s one of those tools that have a high potential but often are overlooked due to the clutter and general mess of the listing of available Services items.
I hope Apple actually starts to TELL SOMEONE about Services!
I’ve used them for quite (since 10.2 or maybe earlier) a while and find them indispensable! It’s a shame that the Services menu is buried in sub-menus and gets really cluttered. I even use Service Scrubber to try and tame my Leopard Services Items.
I look forward to seeing how this works once I install Snow Leopard.
@ DogaDoga
It works but be wary! People who have tried this sometimes stop receiving voicemails for some reason.
Ragarcia,
are you running snow leopard?