A collection of Mac OS Quick Actions (Services) for manipulating text.
These quick actions are available when text is selected in any app. Once you have the text selected, either right-click on the selection to access the services menu, or, use the Services sub-menu under the app's main menu (the app's name in the menubar). The selected text will be replaced with the altered version.
The following services are provided:
- Selection to lower case — converts the selection to lower case, e.g.
HELLO WORLD!→hello world! - Selection to Title Case — converts the selection to Title Case, e.g.
hello world!→Hello World! - Selection to Upper Case — converts the selection to UPPER CASE, e.g.
hello world!→HELLO WORLD! - Selection to Coma-separated Values — replace all white space with a coma followed by a space.
- Selection to Plain Number — remove all characters other than digits and dots, e.g.
1,234 bytes→1234.
These quick actions are available when text is selected in any app. Once you have the text selected, either right-click on the selection to access the services menu, or, use the Services sub-menu under the app's main menu (the app's name in the menubar). The result of the measurement will be displayed using a MacOS Notification.
The following services are provided:
- Count Characters — generates a notification with the number of characters in the selection. Accented characters like
écount as a single character, as do emoji. - Count Words — generates a notification with the number of words in the selection. The service uses the terminal command
wc -wto perform the calculation. - Count Lines — generates a notification with the number of lines in the selection. The service uses the terminal command
wc -lto perform the calculation.
These quick actions are available in any app at any time from the Services sub-menu under the app's main menu (the app's name in the menubar).
- Clipboard to lower case — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to a string and then converted to lower case.
- Clipboard to Title Case — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to a string and then converted to Title Case.
- Clipboard to UPPER CASE — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to a string and then converted to UPPER CASE.
- Clipboard to Plain Text — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to an un-styled (plain text) string.
- Clipboard to Plain Number — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to an un-styled (plain text) string with everything other than digits and dots removed e.g.
1,234 bytes→1234. - Remove White Space from Clipboard — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents with all white space removed, regardless of where it appears.
- Trim Clipboard — replace the contents of the clipboard with the current contents converted to string with all leading and trailing white space removed.
- Clipboard to Coma-separated Values — replace all white space with a coma followed by a space.
These quick actions are available in various contexts depending on the action.
- Random Line from Selection (available on text selections) — split the text into lines, pick one at random, and store it in the clipboard. The original text is not altered in any way.
Each quick action is included as a ZIP file in this repository's Services folder. Extract the ZIP file and double-click to install. Or, extract the ZIP file and copy the workflow into ~/Library/Services.
The Quick Actions that alter or measure selected text can be accessed by right-clicking on a text selection in any app and expanding the Services menu.
The Quick Actions that alter the clipboard are primarily accessed via the Services sub-menu in any app's main menu (the first item in the Menu Bar after the Apple logo, i.e. the one with the same name as the app itself). If there is currently text selected within the app, then the text selection services will show in this menu too.
Assigning shortcut keys can be particularly useful for the Quick Actions that alter the clipboard contents. Shortcuts can be registered for any Quick Action via the Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences. You'll find the Quick Actions listed under Services in the left side-bar. With Services selected in the left side bar you'll find the Quick Actions that alter or measure selected text under Text in the primary panel, and the actions for altering the clipboard contents under General.
