Bouncing AirDrop contents to my desktop

I never use my Downloads folder. It’s a fusion drive, so it’s precious, fast, and expensive. I don’t need a thousand downloaded copies of Xcode and firmware updates littering its limited space. Instead, I point all my browsers and other apps to download to my secondary data disk.

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And before you ask, I use numerical and alphabetic prefixes so everything shows up in the right place and the right order for quick reference and single-letter typing access. Whatever data I can offload from my main drive, I do offload:

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However, when it comes to airdropping, it’s generally true that whatever I’m sending back and forth is of immediate interest. In such case, I don’t want it heading into my Downloads folder. I want it on my desktop as soon as it lands. As  I’m updating my Playgrounds Book right now, I’m doing a lot more airdropping than I normally would.

I’m not a big user of smart folders and Automator actions. I have a smallish bunch that I occasionally use. Still, they have their place and today was a perfect occasion to bring a new one into the mix.

I just had had it with the Downloads folder and decided to build a bouncer that would automatically throw any item added to ~/Downloads up to the desktop. I thought I’d share how to do this.

Step 1. Create a new Folder Action

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Step 2. Choose the Downloads folder.

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Step 3. Drag “Move Finder Items” onto “Drag actions or files here to build your workflow”

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This creates the following action, with Desktop selected by default. (If it’s not, choose Desktop for the destination.)

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Step 4. Then save:

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Your new automator action is stored in ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder\ Actions:

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Step 5. Test. Drop a file into Downloads and confirm that it moves to the desktop. You should now be ready to airdrop to your desktop.

Note: I’m sure there’s a better way to do this, but I actually wrote an app that quickly opens AirDrop windows on the Mac side of things. I found an appropriate AppleScript online, compiled it to an app, and use Spotlight to launch it. Very handy when I’m more focused on iOS than OS X at the moment.

2 Comments

  • I’m going to search GitHub for the “appropriate AppleScript” you refer to. I just downloaded this plugin for Xcode today: https://github.com/zats/AdjustFontSize-Xcode-Plugin

    • First, plugins won’t work in Xcode 8.

      Second, the appropriate Applescript can be found by searching for automatically open airdrop window applescript quicksilver