New Workflow to get TV recaps

You guys inspired me last week to automate some more things.

For several years I’ve had a “Recap…” action in Launch Center Pro that presented a window, then I typed in or dictated name of a TV show, then it launched a Google search.

I didn’t want to type in the names anymore, all those finger-poking keystrokes! I repeat the same shows over and over after all, every week as the season broadcasts, or more often if binge-watching.

I had started a Workflow workflow that presented various TV shows and I pick from the list, but hadn’t succeeded in getting it to work. Last week I worked on it some more, read about the difference between Lists / Menus / Dictionaries (thanks for this https://www.rosemaryorchard.com/blog/workflow-menus-lists-dictionaries, @RosemaryOrchard), got it to work. It is much shorter than the original attempt, which went like this:

  • create a variable
  • assign text “recap” to variable
  • present menu with TV Shows
  • for each menu choice, get text from input,
  • add text value to variable
  • create a URL:
    http://google.com/search?q=variable
  • open the URL in Safari

I could not successfully get both the TV show name AND “recap” to come through to the Google query.
This version is much simpler:

  • present list of TV Shows
  • create a URL:
    http://google.com/search?q= the word “recap” + a space + list result
  • open the URL in Safari

without ever explicitly creating any variable.

https://workflow.is/workflows/3f118431cc2f4d21bb2fd811de967c00

Thanks Automators!

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