Learning Hammerspoon
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Learning Hammerspoon

Unleash the power of automation on your Mac

About the Book

In this book you will learn how to use Hammerspoon, a powerful open-source framework which makes using a Mac more pleasant, productive and fun. It enables interaction with the system at multiple layers—from low-level file system or network access, mouse or keyboard event capture and generation, all the way to manipulating applications or windows, processing URLs and drawing on the screen. It also allows interfacing with AppleScript, the most common mechanism for automation on the Mac. Hammerspoon configuration is written in Lua, a popular embedded programming language.

Using Hammerspoon, you can replace many stand-alone Mac utilities for controlling or customizing specific aspects of your Mac (those that tend to overcrowd the menubar). Here are some examples of things you can do with it:

  • Add missing or more convenient keyboard shortcuts to applications, even for complex multi-step actions. For example: automated tagging and filing in Evernote, mail archival in Mail or Outlook, filing items from multiple applications to OmniFocus using consistent keyboard shortcuts, or muting/unmuting a conversation in Skype.
  • Manipulate windows using keyboard shortcuts to resize, move and arrange them.
  • Dispatch URLs to different browsers based on regular expression patterns. When combined with Site-specific Browsers, this allows for highly flexible management of bookmarks, plugins and search configurations.
  • Replace Spotlight, Lacona and other launchers with a fully configurable, extensible launcher, which allows not only to open applications, files and bookmarks, but to trigger arbitrary Lua functions.
  • Set up actions to happen automatically when switching between WiFi networks—for example, for reconfiguring proxies in some applications.
  • Keyboard-triggered translation of selected text between arbitrary human languages.
  • Keep a configurable and persistent clipboard history.
  • Automatically pause audio playback when headphones are unplugged.

In this book you will learn how to get started with Hammerspoon, how to use pre-made modules, and how to write your own, to achieve an unprecedented level of control over your Mac.

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  • Categories

    • Software
    • Computers and Programming
    • Home Automation
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About the Author

Diego Zamboni
Diego Zamboni

I am a computer scientist, consultant, programmer, sysadmin, Mac fanatic and overall geek. I am passionate about cool tools and automation. I have been programming for at least 35 years but still learning new things every day.

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Table of Contents

  • Preface to the early release
    • Release notes
  • 2 Introduction
    • Mac automation
    • What will you learn?
    • Conventions Used in This Book
  • 3 Getting started with Hammerspoon
    • What is Hammerspoon?
    • How does Hammerspoon work?
    • Installing Hammerspoon
    • Your first Hammerspoon configuration
    • The Hyper key
    • Keeping private information separate
    • Debugging tools and the Hammerspoon console
  • 4 Using Spoons in Hammerspoon
    • Using a Spoon to locate your mouse
    • Automated Spoon installation and configuration
  • 5 Just enough Lua to be productive with Hammerspoon
    • Flow control
    • Dot-vs-colon method access in Lua
    • Functions
    • Tables
    • Tables as namespaces
    • Patterns
    • String manipulation
    • Learning more Lua
  • 6 DRAFT Exploring the Hammerspoon API
    • Events and Hotkeys
    • Window, Menus and Screen Manipulation
    • On-screen Drawing, Images and Alerts
    • Application and Process Manipulation
    • Sound and Music
    • Networking and Web
    • System and Device Manipulation
    • Data Processing and Utilities
    • Hammerspoon itself
  • 7 DRAFT Hammerspoon cookbook, tips and tricks
    • Tip: be mindful of garbage collection
    • Show Homebrew package info
    • Tip: using asynchronous methods
    • Transform URLs before opening them
    • Other resources and configuration examples
  • 8 Writing your own extensions and Spoons
    • Writing a new Spoon
    • Writing a Hammerspoon extension in Lua
  • 9 Using and extending Seal
    • Using Seal
    • Writing your own Seal plugins
  • Colophon

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