Hook Version 3.8 beta with Shortcuts support and more

Releases
1

Hook Version 3.8 (4916, Integration v. 229) public beta 1 is now available for download from the Hook 3.8 Release Notes page.

In a nutshell:

  • Hook Pro now supports macOS automation Shortcuts. The first actions supported are Hook Bookmarks Together, Open Bookmark, and Add Bookmark. This is a PRO feature. We will add more support.
  • We’ve added an Advanced Preferences panel to allow you to prevent Hook from searching some Finder folders when Hook attempts to resolve hook://file/ URLs in some conditions (such as when you have received a hook://file/ URL from someone else, or across Macs, or when files in shared folders are moved).
  • We’ve renamed some commands (If you’re using Keyboard Maestro to control Hook, or have remapped Hook’s keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences you might need to adjust your scripts).
  • Updated to latest Sparkle framework.
  • Fixed several bugs.

Shortcuts feedback requested

We are releasing this as a beta because we want to add more Shortcuts support to Hook 3.8.

In 3.8 and/or subsequently we plan to introduce:

  • Get bookmarks hooked to URL: Given a URL, returns a collection of links each of which contains both a name and URL.
  • Get Bookmark to File from FilePath, and Get Bookmark to File — returns a hook://file/ URL for a file
  • Get bookmark from active window

We’d love to get feedback about how you are using Hook’s Shortcuts, and any problems you find; and we’d like to receive your suggestions, and requests.

Gratitude

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback that influenced this release! We had quite a few requests for Shortcuts automation, for instance.

3 Likes
2

The link doesn’t go to 3.8… it takes me to 3.3. Thank you.

1 Like
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classic. thanks for letting us know. It’s https://hookproductivity.com/release-notes/hook-3-8/

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4

Where does it look by default? /?

Why is this useful? Is it performance/hangs?

5

thanks for asking.

By default, it looks directly where the file is, even if the file moves. If it can’t find it for some reason, then it may fall back on a Spotlight search. By default the search is restricted to the home directory, but there are advanced parameters (per documentation) to expand that search.

Not for that. Sometimes one has a copy of a file in a backup folder and one don’t want Hook to hook:///file/ URLs to point to them. (Related, not to do with Hook, one often would want to exclude backup directories from Time Machine backups.)

Before / around the final release of Hook 3.8, we’ll add a webpage about the new tab with more information. It will be listed here: Preferences Window – Hookmark

6

Hi @LucB - firstly, this is very exciting to automators, thank you! Here is some feedback!

  1. The Add Bookmark action doesn’t seem to accept the Name, see below.
  2. The Hook Bookmarks Together action is a little confusing, in that we can optionally provide Name 1, Name 2, etc. Shouldn’t Hook infer what the title is if the URLs have already been added?

Objective: when viewing a JIRA item, create a corresponding OmniFocus project and Obsidian page for it, then hook each of the items together.

In my automation scenario

  • a JIRA url was hooked manually (it’s now in Hook’s bookmarks)
  • a corresponding OmniFocus project is created
  • the Add Bookmark action is run to add the OmniFocus URL and OmniFocus Task Name (actually Project name) as a new bookmark
  • the Hook Bookmarks Together action is run to hook the JIRA URL and OmniFocus URL together
  • the future intention is run a Hook Bookmarks Together action for an Obsidian page - but I’m not there yet

In Shortcuts
image

Now when I invoke Hook from JIRA, it’s like it hasn’t resolved the OmniFocus bookmark name yet.
image

The above appears to be a persistent state, until I go over the OmniFocus project, invoke Hook on the project, then go back to JIRA and invoke Hook there, then it resolves the OmniFocus bookmark name. Note that the OmniFocus URL is the same below, but now it shows the correct name as supplied in Shortcuts. It’s like the Add Bookmark action in Shortcuts isn’t telling the Hook application to refresh the Bookmark name that is displayed. It’s like it only happens when I invoke Hook using the UI later on.
image

Again, well done, Hook has come out of gates strong, and I look forward to additional actions coming into Shortcuts!

1 Like
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Thank you very much for letting us know. We will fix it.

Bi Ling

8

As per my objective, I am now ready to add the Obsidian linking

image

ObsidianUrl is correctly formatted
image

But when I go to OmniFocus and invoke Hook on the project, when it was bookmarked, it didn’t store anything after the & in obsidian://open?vault=Work&file=APPS-1833%20PROD%20Support%20S2218%20Mon%20509%20-%20Tues%20609 i.e. it only bookmarked obsidian://open?vault=Work. This is strange behaviour. Please investigate?

image

1 Like
9

Hook 3.8 public beta 2 is coming soon. This is the updated list of actions:

  • Hook Bookmarks Together
  • Unhook Bookmarks
  • Get Bookmarks Hooked To URL
  • Add Bookmark
  • Focus On Bookmark
  • Get Bookmark By Request Handle
  • Get Bookmark From Active Window

For the semantics, until the beta is available you may refer to the AppleScript dictionary because we’ve made the Shortcut actions align with Hook’s AppleScript dict.

2 Likes
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Thanks for letting us know. We will investigate. Several of us are on vacation rest of this week, and Monday is a stat holiday in Canada; so we’ll look at it early next week.

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11

I’ve noticed that Hook 3.8 Public Beta 2- Release Notes – Hook is now available, I’ll give it a test!

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12

And there are fixes for Shortcuts issues raised, and it has additional changes and additional actions. I’ll close this topic off in favor of the one on Hook 3.8 Public Beta 2: more shortcut actions and bug fixes. Please raise issues in there or in a new topic.

1 Like