Sidekick: Automate Macs Based on Location

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

I love it when all sorts of small processes can be automated. I sincerely hope that various "smart" homes, coffee makers, lamps, kettles will soon be in mass production. Already now, having a Jawbone UP tracker and Philips Hue bulbs, you can configure the light to turn on in the room before getting up after sleep, using, for example, the service. What about our MacBooks? I also want to automate some processes on it!

It turns out that you can do that too. You just need to install a small utility called Sidekick. Its icon will appear in the top menu bar, from which you can launch the settings of the application itself.

The main functional feature of the app is to customize certain actions based on your location. To make it clearer, I'll give you a simple example:

Most of us have at least two places where we are most often - work and home. If you use your MacBook as a work and home computer at the same time, then it always accompanies you on trips to and from work, respectively. And of course we use different applications, websites and system settings for different locations. But every time to carry out the same manipulations on opening / closing applications, turning on and off settings - sooner or later it just gets boring. And then Sidekick comes to the rescue, which will help automate all the processes.

We set two locations: Home and Work. We indicate the addresses of both points (using Google Maps) and the radius in which our settings will be applied - this will be convenient if two points are in close proximity to each other. Further, for each of the specified locations, certain settings are made available in the application. For example, when I come to work, I want my bluetooth to turn off, Telegram to close, the brightness is set to 50%, and a new tab with the company's website opens in the browser. Arriving home, I, accordingly, want the messenger to start, turn on bluetooth, open MacRadar, the sound stood at 70%, and TimeMachine began to make a backup. And all of this can be customized with the Sidekick.

Naturally, depending on the tasks, you yourself are free to choose what and when to open, enable, install and run. The only limitation is the settings of the utility itself. There are not many different actions, but they also cannot boast of great abundance. However, there are more or less basic features suitable for most users. In addition, Sidekick has support for extensions that users can create themselves. Some of them are already available on the developers site.

And everything would be fine in this wonderful program, if not for the price. Now it is a little over two thousand rubles, which, you see, is a lot. But before buying, you can download a free trial version for evaluation, which will work for 15 days without any restrictions.