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Mac OS X Services (the menu you never go to)

highschoolblows.blogspot.com — There's a whole hidden side of text modification that is stashed away, yet right at your fingertips.

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  • burntfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its weird but, I don't get either the Format or Convert options in my services menu.
  • andrethegiant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hmm.... in Safari? What OS are you running? (10.x.x)
  • burntfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am running 10.4.3. It also seems I don't have either in TextEdit as well (which is where these would seem to be more useful than Safari).
  • andrethegiant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think you need to download WordService - it's the last download on the link posted in the article. If that works, please post back.
  • Ultim8Fury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1+digg.

    stuff I've never even thought to use. :)
  • acherion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Whoa, this stuff rocks. Summarize is very handy for me :)

    You think you know OSX inside out, and then a little gem like this pops up.
  • tacocat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Services, once you start you never stop
  • TomMusicThing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All of these are available in Word on mac or PC (these are the PC versions, but I've used them on a Mac):
    Shift+F3 toggles through the cases
    'Sort list' is in the 'table' menu, but works on paragraphs
    The 'Auto Summarize' function in the 'tools' menu, which is funny rather than useful
    The remove multiple spaces thing isn't built in, so you have to search and replace ".." for "." (where the stop is a space, obviously). Run that a couple of times and they'll all go.
  • Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0NO WAAAAY

    I've been using OSX for four years and never knew what that menu was for. Dugg and dugg.
  • kimmoke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I could easily come up with a couple of more interesting uses for such services than converting a block of text into lowercase.

    If you often find out that you've typed a whole lot of text with caps lock accidentally on, maybe you should take a look at the screen once in a while when typing.
  • Niao, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I found it useful for launching stickies (APPLE + SHIFT + Y, from anywhere) since most of my on-the-fly notes go into stickies, but this is pretty cool. :3
  • optimusfx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even more useful if you get IceCoffee and put Services in the right-click contextual menu.

    http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/8852
  • peerk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1LOL, MAC userz. NOOBZ forever.
  • drewcipher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very cool. Dugg.
  • hyphn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think the Summerize one is the coolest, this is what it thinks of the article when summerized to 1% (maximum):
    "They're called Services and you put them in your home folder -> Library -> Services, if they don't get installed there already."
    Groovy..
  • franksands, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0When I had a power book, I used the Services menu from time to time, very handy...
  • JetwingX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've known that services was there, it's just that there has never been much of anything useful there. This is something Jobs brought over from NeXT OS (as well as the Dock)
  • ForbesBingley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I use the Services menu quite a lot.

    Get yourselves a copy of the Nisus Thesaurus...
  • trampish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't even own a mac but this is handy and worth seeing for someone who uses it just once in a while.
  • timbtwisted, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Has anyone else noticed that every Apple story seems to get to the front page....not saying that's a bad thing, I love my mac. Just making an observation that's all.
  • :::zak:::, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0the Format menu is missing for me?

    wtf?

    alphabetize would be infinitely useful.
  • felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Has anyone else noticed that every Apple story seems to get to the front page..."

    Hmm, I count 25 articles in the past day with the word "Apple," none of which made the front page. 2 with the word "Macintosh," also not promoted.
    20 about "Mac" - only one made it to the front page, this one.

    I'm not seeing your point.
  • auricomnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0great link! very informative !!
  • laraksca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Once I found the AntiWord, Calc and Word services I no longer needed MS Word for anything. Dumped it and never upgraded.
    Some services may not work in all situations they should. Some applications will make services geared for their use available.

  • allanj37, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So, any clue as to why this doesn't work in firefox?

    (1.5 RC3)
  • FredB7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The service menu is really great if you have the Service manager prefpane.

    "The Service Manager allows you to enable and disable applications' services. It also lets you change key commands and menu item organization."

    http://www.blacktree.com/apps/servicemanager/index.html
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've used the services menu for 3 years or so to create switchers, especially academic types. I've kind of made a quick demo in front of people to show off the Mac in 5-10 minutes, part of which includes highlighting a large article in Safari, using the summarize service, and then using the speech service to read the 5 pages now condensed into a couple paragraphs.
  • fizzeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I figured those out a while ago but completely forgot about them. Thanks for the reminder.
    digg+
  • saggygrandma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Awesome, gotta give my mac another hug when i get home :p
  • ThePharaoh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Awesome find! I never really tinkered in those menus. +digg to that one!

    thepharaoh
    http://www.freneticnetwork.com
    http://www.frenetictech.com
  • abhibeckert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"So, any clue as to why this doesn't work in firefox?"

    Because FireFox is a "badly behaved" application. It doesn't support a whole bunch of stuff that every mac app is required to support. It's a pretty common issue in cross platform apps, especially open source ones (not that I have anything against open source, it's simply a fact).

    Simply put, windows and linux doesn't have services, and therefore the FireFox team hasn't bothered implementing it. However, they probably do work in Camino (a mac only/cocoa browser by the mozilla team, which was started not long before FireFox).
  • stewacide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've used the services menu a bit but this article is still really neat.
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