record

macos-defaults recorder 📷

Stability: 1 - Experimental

All the images and videos you will find on macos-defaults are built programmatically. It's done using Node.js scripts found in this folder subfolders.

Programmatic record serves 2 goals:

• Record similar actions with different defaults config.
• Make it easy to replay when a new version comes out.

Technical overview

The record.js file launches subfolders' recording scripts.

The scripts are all the .js files in this folder subfolders. There is one script per screenshot/video. These scripts share the same workflow:

1. Set a defaults command value
2. Prepare the recording using robot.js
3. Record using Aperture
4. Post production (resize, compress, move)
5. Reset the defaults value I try to keep as much similarity as possible for same-command examples.

Some utils are available to simplify scripts dev:

• captureImage(x, y, width, height) capture a screenshot using jimp
  • x: position from the left border of the screen.
  • y: position from the bottom border of the screen.
  • width: the width of the image.
  • height: the height of the image.
• async compressPngImage(inputPath, outputFolder, outputName) try to resize the image to a max width of 740 (VuePress page width) using sharp and compress it using pngquant
  • inputPath: the original image path.
  • outputFolder: where the compressed image should be placed.
  • outputName: what the compressed image file should be called.
• async compressVideo(inputPath, outputFolder, outputName) resize and compress the video using ffmpeg
  • inputPath: the original video path.
  • outputFolder: where the compressed video should be placed.
  • outputName: what the compressed video file should be called.
• async makeAppActive(appName) open an App and set it as active using AppleScript
  • appName: the app name.
• async moveAndResizeApp(appName, cropArea, screenHeight) move and resize an App using AppleScript
  • appName: the app name.
  • cropArea: the cropArea used by Aperture ({ x ,y , width, height }).
  • screenHeight: the screen height.

I consider removing the resize/compression part and upload these assets to a media CDN like Cloudinary to serve optimal resources based on user preferences.

Launch locally

This part is only useful if you want to add a command. I strongely recommand not to launch the scripts locally if you don't want to mess up your config.

💻 My setup

I'm personally launching these scripts on a 15" 2015 MacBook Pro running the latest macOS developer beta version. I log in as another account when I want to work on the scripts. The scripts should be agnostic from the hardware they run on, please let me know if some of them do not by opening an issue.

🏗 Install

yarn install

🚀 Usage

⚠️ Do not launch these commands on your daily user account! The scripts override your user config.

When launching for the first time, you'll have some security prompts to confirm.

Hope you'll have as much fun as I had when I launched it for the first time 😊.

# Launch all recording
yarn record

# Launch a specific command script recording
yarn record screenshots/disable-shadow/false.js

# Launch all scripts of a command recording
yarn record dock/autohide-delay/*

# Launch a whole category recording
yarn record dock/*/*

🚧 Run unit tests

I couldn't find a way to unit test these scripts. If you have an idea, I'm really interested.