Build a Finder Quick Action

A Quick Action puts your automation in Finder’s right-click menu, next to the built-in ones. It is the difference between a workflow you occasionally run and a workflow you actually use.

Take the image shortcut from earlier in this module. In its details pane, configure the Shortcut to appear in Quick Actions and accept only the file types it understands. Finder supplies the selected items as input.

details pane -> Use as Quick Action -> Finder: on
receives: Images (from Quick Actions)
if there is no input: Stop and Respond

Restricting the input type does real work here. With images only, the action stays available for a selected PNG and out of the way for a PDF, instead of appearing everywhere and failing after the user picks it.

Inside the workflow, treat the selection as a batch, because Finder sends everything that was selected. For each file, derive a new destination and check whether it already exists. Return the created files so Finder or the next action can reveal them.

To use it, select one or more images in Finder, right-click, and look under Quick Actions. The first run on files in a protected folder such as Desktop or Downloads can trigger a permission prompt. That is expected — approve it once and rerun.

Then test like you mean it: one file, several files, a filename with spaces, and an unsupported item. The several-files case is where Quick Actions differ most from terminal runs, and where duplicate-name collisions surface. Watch the destination folder while you run each case, and count the results.

Keep the transformation logic usable from Terminal so the Finder trigger stays thin. The Quick Action should collect the selection and hand it over, nothing more. When the logic lives in a script or shared shortcut, you can test it with fixtures from the shell — and the same logic can later run on a schedule, unchanged.

The failure mode: building the whole workflow inside the Quick Action. It works, but every test now requires a hand-made Finder selection, and none of it is reusable anywhere else.