macOS Running an AppleScript at a specific time

[rediffusion]

Probably a silly question...

I have created an AppleScript to run Dropbox....

tell application "Finder"
activate
open application file "Dropbox.app" of folder "Applications" of startup disk
end tell

I want to make it run at 1am every night but can't work out how to do it. Do I use Automator?


Thanks in advance,
R

 

[kryten2]

Probably a silly question...

I have created an AppleScript to run Dropbox....



I want to make it run at 1am every night but can't work out how to do it. Do I use Automator?


Thanks in advance,
R

Here's an launchd example that should run Dropbox every day at 1am. Save the below snippet into a plain text file in your ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder with the file name user.dropbox.nightly.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>Label</key>
          <string>user.dropbox.nightly</string>
          <key>ProgramArguments</key>
          <array>
                    <string>osascript</string>
                    <string>-e</string>
                    <string>activate application "Dropbox"</string>
          </array>
          <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
          <dict>
                    <key>Hour</key>
                    <integer>1</integer>
                    <key>Minute</key>
                    <integer>0</integer>
          </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

You can test it by using the following command in the Terminal application :

# this line loads the launchd job
launchctl load Library/LaunchAgents/user.dropbox.nightly.plist

# this line forces the job to trigger immediately rather than waiting until 1am
launchctl start user.dropbox.nightly

# this line unloads the plist, in case there's an error
launchctl unload Library/LaunchAgents/user.dropbox.nightly.plist

 

[rediffusion]

kryten2,

Thank you SO much!!!! Just ran the Terminal test and it works great.

R

 

[kryten2]

kryten2,

Thank you SO much!!!! Just ran the Terminal test and it works great.

R

Great. Let's hope it also runs at the time it's supposed to.

 

[rediffusion]

Great. Let's hope it also runs at the time it's supposed to.

i'll let you know

 

[Johnny83]

Hi kryten2!

On this topic I have a apple script which auto connects the vpn if it drops I would like to run it between 6pm and 8am. Can you help me with this please?