Getting a Markdown link to a window in Safari

• Tagged with applescript, macos, macos:safari
• Posted 26 July 2020

Here’s an AppleScript I wrote today, which gets a Markdown-formatted link to whatever’s in my frontmost Safari window:

tell application "Safari"
  set theName to get name of tab 1 of window 1
  set theURL to get URL of tab 1 of window 1

  log "[" & theName & "](" & theURL & ")"
end tell

It creates something like:

[Getting a Markdown link to a window in Safari – alexwlchan](https://alexwlchan.net/2020/07/getting-a-markdown-link-to-a-window-in-safari/)

I use it when the URL doesn’t contain much useful information (say, an article ID that’s entirely numeric), and I want a bit more context for why I saved a particular link.

This is one of several automations that I have to get URLs from my browser. Each of them saves a few clicks, and it means I don’t break my writing flow going to the browser to copy/paste a URL.

I wrote about an automation for getting tweets last year, and the original idea I got from Dr. Drang over a decade ago. I have it bound to ;mdurl using Keyboard Maestro, with ;md2url for the second window (if I’m typing into a text box in Safari).