Computing – Rob Allen's DevNotes

OpenConnect on Mac

One of my clients has recently moved to AnyConnect VPN and I've been having routing problems with the official Mac client. As my colleagues on Linux on the project have not had these issues, I investigated and installed the OpenConnect client. These are my notes after scouring the Internet to set it up how I want it. Installation I used Homebrew:

$ brew install openconnect

1	$ brew install openconnect

OpenConnect is a CLI tool. If you want a GUI in your menu bar,… continue reading.

Posted on 23 March 2021 in Computing, Software View all 3 comments

Keyboard control of Big Sur notification alerts

With the release of Big Sur, my scripts for keyboard control of macOS notification alerts stopped working. With a bit of experimentation and help from Google, I have written new ones. Closing an alert To close a notification alert on Big Sur, conceptually we want to press the X button that appears when you hover over it. The AppleScript to do this is:

activate application "NotificationCenter"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "NotificationCenter"
        set theWindow to group 1 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of window "Notification Center"
        # click theWindow
        set theActions to actions of theWindow
        repeat with theAction in theActions
            if description of theAction is "Close" then
                tell theWindow
                    perform theAction
                end tell
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

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activate application "NotificationCenter"

tell application "System Events"

tell process "NotificationCenter"

set theWindow to group 1 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of window "Notification Center"

# click theWindow

set theActions to actions of theWindow

repeat with theAction in theActions

if description of theAction is "Close" then

tell theWindow

perform theAction

end tell

exit repeat

end if

end repeat

end tell

This is much more complicated than just clicking button 1 of… continue reading.

Posted on 27 February 2021 in AppleScript, Computing Leave a comment

Add Apple Watch authentication to sudo

Since 1Password added Apple Watch unlock I've wondered if there are other situations when I need to enter my password where it instead require a click of my Watch instead. I recently came across an article about how to make sudo work with Touch ID, which is nice, but my iMac Pro doesn't have Touch ID. I went searching though and found pam-watchid! This is a PAM module for using the Watch – exactly what… continue reading.

Posted on 9 December 2020 in Computing View all 6 comments

Prevent an external drive from auto mounting on macOS

I have an external drive attached to the USB hub on my Thunderbolt Display that I use to clone my laptop's internal drive every night using the schedule feature of SuperDuper!. At the appointed time, SuperDuper! will mount the external drive, clone the internal drive and then unmount the external drive again which is very convenient. However, whenever I plug in my laptop, the drive automatically mounts. This doesn't particularly worry me, but when I… continue reading.

Posted on 5 August 2020 in Computing, Development View all 2 comments

Keyboard shortcut to mirror displays on a Touch Bar Mac

One feature of the 16" MacBook Pro that was new to me is the Touch Bar. This thing replaces the F-keys with a touch pad that adjusts itself to the app in use in order to provide useful shortcuts you can just touch. This is all well and good, but when presenting, I use the cmd+F1 keyboard shortcut to toggle display mirroring. A useful Stack Overflow answer tells me that I can use cmd+{dim brightness}… continue reading.

Posted on 13 December 2019 in Computing, Keyboard Maestro, Software View all 3 comments

Dark and light mode blog images with MarsEdit

As dark mode is more popular than ever now that the iPhone supports it, I've been working out how to get the browser to render a dark image in dark mode and a light image in light mode. It turns out that the way to do this simply is to use the <picture> element like this:

<picture>
    <source 
        srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-dark.png"
        media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"
    />
    <source
        srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-light.png"
        media="(prefers-color-scheme: light), (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference)"
    />
    <img src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-light.png" 
         alt="Description of example image here"
         class="border" loading="lazy" />
</picture>

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<source

srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-dark.png"

media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"

/>

<source

srcset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-light.png"

media="(prefers-color-scheme: light), (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference)"

/>

<img src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/example-image-light.png"

alt="Description of example image here"

class="border" loading="lazy" />

</picture>

As I use MarsEdit to write my posts, I created a Media Markup Template that does the heavy… continue reading.

Posted on 4 December 2019 in Computing, MarsEdit, Software Leave a comment

HTML encode selected text on Mac

When writing blog posts, I write directly in HTML, mostly from habit and because I've not set up mark-up text processing on WordPress. I'm comfortable enough with simple HTML that it's never seemed important enough to sort out, especially with MarsEdit's macros for common HTML tags. One thing that I need to do relatively regularly is to HTML encode code snippets for use in <tt> and <pre> tags. I have been doing this via a… continue reading.

Posted on 23 October 2019 in Computing, Keyboard Maestro, MarsEdit Leave a comment

Automatically mounting a network drive on Mac

I have so many photos that I can't store them all on my hard drive and keep them on my NAS. While on my home network, it would be convenient to automatically mount the NAS folder onto my Mac as I keep forgetting before I open Lightroom. Usually I would use automount to do this, but Lightroom cannot see automounted folders, so I decided to use a combination of AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro. Mount a… continue reading.

Posted on 28 August 2019 in Computing, Keyboard Maestro Leave a comment

Keyboard shortcut to Save as PDF on Mac

I regularly print to PDF on my Mac, This is done from the print dialog by selecting Save as PDF from the drop down in the bottom left of the dialog which is a bit of a pain to get using the mouse. I recently discovered that I could create a keyboard shortcut to make this much easier. In System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts you can create a keyboard shortcut to… continue reading.

Posted on 12 June 2019 in Computing, PDF, Software View all 10 comments

Keyboard control of macOS notification alerts

I use Apple's Reminders app to remind me about things that I need to do. It has the useful feature of syncing across my Mac, iPad and iPhone and I can add to it via Siri in my car. When I am notified on my Mac, a notification alert appears with two buttons: Complete and Later. Clicking Later offers a set of options to dismiss the alert and have it reappear in 5 minutes, in… continue reading.

Posted on 9 January 2019 in Computing, Software View all 7 comments