John Voorhees writing for MacStories:
My hope with Quick Actions is that they are the first step in a ground-up re-imagining of automation on the Mac where Quick Actions become the equivalent of shortcuts on iOS and Automator is replaced by something closer to the Shortcuts app on iOS. Automator has served Mac users well for years, but it doesn’t take long using Automator before you need to resort to scripting inside Automator workflows to get things done. Shortcuts supports scripting too, but I’ve found I can create far more complex automations on iOS without resorting to scripts, which makes it accessible to more people.
Dark Mode is the new feature in macOS Mojave getting all the attention, but I’m most interested in Quick Actions. I agree that seeing a tool like Shortcuts on the Mac would be nice, but the ability to run AppleScript in Automator brings all sorts of possibilities to Quick Actions. For example, I’m no scripter, but I regularly use a very basic AppleScript to launch Keyboard Maestro macros from Automator. Once I upgrade to Mojave, I’ll be seeing if I can get some of my Keyboard Maestro macros working through Quick Actions.1
I need to hold off on updating, since I rely on Mail Act-On, which won’t be ready for Mojave (as part of a new Mail app suite) until October.↩
