Mac Quick Action – Create Folders
One of the first steps after signing a show contract is setting up the two most important share folders for the lighting department – the “public” and “private” folders.
For my team and I, Dropbox is where most work happens. Our private folder lives here, and contains all of our working documents including the Vectorworks, Lightwright, FileMaker, and InDesign documents.
The “public” folder is typically shared by the producer or theatre company, and this is the place where anyone and everyone can access things. This is where we drop PDFs and other things for public consumption.
For years, I’ve just had two of these “base” folders sitting with my typical folder structure and some basic files, logos, etc inside of. I then copy/paste these into the places they need to go.
Recently, I decided to automate this process using the MacOS Shortcuts App.
The shortcut is pretty simple. It’s set to work in the “Quick Actions” menu which means that you can right click on a folder and then choose the shortcut from there.
When you first install the shortcut, you’ll want to target the “base” folders on your system, one public and one private. From there, whenever you run the shortcut, a prompt will appear asking you if you’re creating a public or private folder, and then it will automatically copy/paste the folder structure and contents from the source folders into the target folder.
You can learn more about Mac Shortcuts here.
Enjoy!
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mikewoodld
