#aptivate

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to Automator workflows and you can overwrite specific app shortcuts in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. But there’s no easy way to assign keyboard shortcuts to AppleScripts.

If you don’t want to use a 3rd party app, one trick you could do is to create Automator workflows that execute your AppleScripts and assign keyboard shortcuts to them. It works, but it’s an extra step.

The space of 3rd party apps is wide. Here’re the top options for solving this.

There are a couple of apps I know of—and probably many more that I don’t—whose sole purpose is to provide this feature: assigning shortcuts to AppleScripts. The two I ‘ve tried: FastScripts and Aptivate are apps whose sole purpose is to address this problem. There’s also Keyboard Maestro whose breathing keyboard shortcuts for workflows.

Another option is app launchers. A couple of them provide this feature. The ones I know of to support this feature are Alfred 1 and 2, Quicksilver, Butler. Unfortunately LaunchBar, the one I’ve been using for a while mostly due to his support for presenting results from AppleScripts, doesn’t.

Finally, here’s the trick I discovered tonight and the reason of this post.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to AppleScripts using BetterTouchTool. If you haven’t heard of it until now, do yourself a favor and download it. Now. The extra gestures that you can add to the Mac touchpad, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad will transform these into Awesomely Magical Mouse and Trackpad.

Back to AppleScripts and keyboard shortcuts though. If you go to the Keyboard tab, you can create a new Keyboard shortcut and make it trigger an Open Application/File/Script.