I've known about Automator for quite awhile now, but never really explored it that much. A few minutes ago, however, I opened it up, and within a few seconds, I had created a fun little shortcut for myself.
If you are like me, you probably have a portable hard drive that you take to and fro. This means, you likely have to eject your drive several times a day, and dragging the icon to the Trash wastes valuable seconds. As an alternative, you could simply single-click the drive on the desktop and press Command-E on the keyboard. Or, you can have a little fun with Automator.
Using Automator, I was able to create an icon that I've placed in my dock, which upon getting clicked, automatically ejects my hard drive.
To do this, right-click your external hard drive on your desktop and from the shortcut menu, choose More > Automator > Create Workflow. This opens up Automator and adds the action "Get Specified Finder Items" to a new workflow. Next, find the "Eject Disk" action from left-hand sidebar, and drag it to the workflow, below the "Get Specified Finder Items" workflow.
Now it's time to create a tiny, little program out of your workflow. Select File > Save As, and then choose Application as the file format. I saved into my Application folder, but you can save wherever you want.
After that, it's simply a matter of adding this new application to your dock. Then, ejecting your external hard drive is just a single click away!
Also, keep in mind that you can change the icon for the application. I found an eject symbol on the web and used it for the dock icon.
This is just one way to use Automator, but the possibilities are endless, so try it out!
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