My plan was to go through Gary Rosenzweig's Automator YouTube playlist and just create each of the Automator programs. (Gary does some of the best work explaining things on the Mac of anyone I've seen.)

So I'm doing this one, which is the last chapter in the video, a little Finder Quick Action to get the file path to a file or folder, with a keyboard shortcut assigned to it. (Yes, I know Opt-Cmd-C, but this is for learning about Automator.)

Pretty simple and straightforward, I enter it and it shows up as a Quick Action. I execute the Quick Action and... no notification.

Check the clipboard and the file path is there on the clipboard; but, no notification.

I'm no dummy. I check System Settings to make sure Automator is allowed to make notifications! Hah!

Hmmm... It is.

Oh! Wait! I'm in the "Work" Focus mode, and I have limited notifications! So I turn off Focus.

Run the QA. Huzzah! A notification!

Which just gives the name of the variable, not the value. What?

I figured I missed a step or something, so I watch that portion of the video again.

Nope. I got everything right.

I figured I'd go ahead and move the variable up into the Title and see if it showed up there. Nope. I put it back in the Message and added a title, "File path:" Honestly, I've forgotten what happened then. But I didn't get the FilePath variable.

The video is a couple of years old, maybe something is broken in Automator under Sonoma. I search the MacScripter Forum. No joy. No reports that Automator notifications are broken.

Well, I got on the 14" MBP and re-created the QA in Automator on that machine. Works perfectly.

Got back on the iMac and basically re-created the QA in a new document, overwrote the old one and ran that. This time, I get the correct Title text, "File path:" but the Message is "Notification."

This gives me very little faith in Automator at this point. I'm going to reboot now, because it's the computer equivalent of "jiggling the cable." Presumably, something is confused somewhere and it's just a matter of getting everything back into a known state.

I hope.

But yeah, my love affair with computers is a pile of cold ashes.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:49 Wednesday, 28 February 2024