Programmable Tooltip for Mac

5 min read Original article ↗

Hello employee! Programmable Tooltip automates your micro-workflows on any Mac app. You can select text on any app, open the tooltip, and choose the action you want to perform. This cuts down the number of clicks and the amount of hand movement by multiple folds. You will work faster, reduce hand strain, lower the risk of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), and improve your overall health.

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How it works

Select a piece of text on any app.

Press the shortcut to open the tooltip.

Select the Tip that you want.

You program the tips based on the shape of the input e.g. numbers only, starting with, contains, or regex matching

Use cases for employees

Convert an epoch millis to a human-readable date Collapse

Scenario: You are looking at an AJAX request in Chrome's Developer Tool. You are seeing the epoch millis, 1721285574539, and want to know what date it is.

Setup:

You enable the pre-configured Tip named 'Convert Unix Timestamps'

Action: You select the epoch millis and open the tooltip. Now you see the human-readable date.

Step 1

Select the epoch millis

Step 2

Open the tooltip

Open go/obj Collapse

Scenario: Your co-worker sent you a Slack message about the charge: ch_3PYB6wDfMvygSfDR4NhurNMG. You want to look up the charge in the company's admin view.

Setup:

You add the pre-configured Tip named 'Open URL' and configure it as follows:

Action: You highlight the charge ID, open the tooltip, and select 'Open go/obj'

Open a JIRA ticket Collapse

Scenario: Your colleague sent you the JIRA ticket, JBR-563, on Slack. You want to open the JIRA ticket.

Setup:

You write a custom Tip that accepts the input matching /\A[A-Za-z]+-[0-9]+\z/ and returns an Open URL Tip whose destination URL is go/jira/{input}

Action: You highlight the JIRA ticket on Slack, open the tooltip, and choose 'Open JIRA'. Now the browser opens the JIRA ticket.

Step 1

Select the JIRA ticket

Step 2

Open the tooltip

Step 3

Select 'Open JIRA'

Step 4

The JIRA ticket is opened

Open a file on VSCode Collapse

Scenario: You are looking at an error stack and seeing the HomeController class name. You want to open HomeController.scala on VSCode.

Setup:

You write a custom Tip that searches through files in specific folders and returns an Open URL Tip whose destination URL is vscode://file/<file_path>

Action: You highlight the class name, open the tooltip, and select 'Open HomeController.scala in VSCode'

Step 1

Select the class name

Step 2

Open the tooltip

Step 3

Select 'Open in VSCode'

Step 4

The file is opened on VSCode

Search Splunk with a keyword Collapse

Scenario: You want to open Splunk and search through it with a specific keyword

Setup:

You add the pre-configured Tip named 'Open URL' and configure it as follows:

Action: You highlight the keyword, open the tooltip, and select 'Search Splunk'

... and many more. Since you can program it, only your imagination is the limit.

What other people said

Very cool idea! I can immediately thing of like 5 things I could use this for.

Easy to setup and near-instant productivity enhancement.

Interesting: Programmable Tooltip is a programmable tooltip that can be "used with any Mac OS app”. Looks cool.

Very cool idea! I also like that the provider script was written in Ruby, makes it easy to start hacking on it.

this is a pretty rad interface

I'm very interested that you can open Intellij code. Do you have example code from your GIF you could link? Is Intellij opened with the type url or a script? Can't wait to use this! Thanks

Don't ignore your health

As an office worker, we work on our computers 8 hours / day. We'll work for years to come. It's important to optimize our work routine in order to avoid the deterioration of our health.

Reducing the number of clicks and the amount of hand movement is one way to reduce straing on your hand, arm, and body. Using Programmable Tooltip is one of the simplest ways to achieve just that.

Programmable Tooltip is free for simple usage and costs $39.99 (a one-time lifetime fee) for advanced usage. As a Stripe employee, you should be able to reimburse a productivity software. Please review your software reimbursement policy.

Investing in good ergonomics (e.g. Programmable Tooltip, good desk, great chair, split keyboard) will pay off on your health in the long run. I implore you to start investing in ergonomics right now.

Strong privacy

Programmable Tooltip runs in App Sandbox, is distributed through App Store, and has gone through the Apple's rigorous review process.

By running in App Sandbox, it is NOT allowed to read, write, or execute files in any user's directory except the directories whose permission is explicitly granted by the users. Since we don't require any permission, we cannot see user's activity. The app only sees the selected text when you open the tooltip. The strong degree of privacy is what sets us apart from our alternatives.

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Improve your productivity and ergonomics today!