The Save to disk action in previous versions of Window Clippings simply generated a unique file name based on the window title. Many of you asked me for the ability to customize this naming in some way. Window Clippings 3 delivers. Every action now has access to a tokenized name that you define on the File Naming tab.
In this example I’ve used the following format:
Sample-<action>-<id> (<wt>)
Here <action>, <id>, and <wt> and tokens that will be replaced just before each action executes to produce a unique file name. Clicking on the button next to the text box displays a popup menu with available tokens and descriptions. In this case <action> is replaced by the name of the action to be executed, <id> is a unique number, and <wt> is the title of the top-most window in your screenshot.
In the following example I’ve added two Save to disk actions that I’ve given distinct names and separated by a Resize action to make a smaller second image.
Given that I’ve configured both actions to save to the same folder the results of taking a screenshot of the Calculator are as follows:
Notice that <action> has been replaced with Save A and Save B respectively. Notice also that the <id> token just keeps incrementing. This counter is stored in the Window Clippings settings file so you can be sure that it will always give you a unique number as long as you don’t replace your settings file. Finally the <wt> token has been replaced with the window title from the Calculator application.
Currently the Save to disk as well as the Run command actions makes use of the file naming feature. In future, more and more actions will take advantage of it including 3rd party actions that should be available in the 3.1 release.
I encourage you to play around with the file naming feature in combination with actions and outputs. With a variety of tokens at your disposal, the combination of all of these features can provide some interesting functionality.
Is there a way to pad the numbers?
I wanted to include the date/time in the filename such that the files would sort by age but single-digit date/time components got in the way.
(I used the ID instead in the end. That’s probably better anyway, seeing as the date is in the filesystem, but maybe someone else will need padded numbers for something.)
Not yet. I wanted to start with a limited set of tokens and get some feedback on it before I added more options. Thanks for the feedback.
Fair ’nuff.
It’s already very useful being able to have the exe name in the filename. No more opening all the Window Clippings.pngs on my desktop hunting for the right one. 🙂
(I do seem to accumulate screenshots on my desktop at times. :))
This is a nice feature but I see a problem with the and tokens. If the capture is a region rather than a window these resolve to an empty string. It would be nice if some literal was used instead, “region” perhaps. Alternatively you might consider providing two file naming definitions, one to handle windows and one to handle regions; that would give the user more flexibility.
Thanks for the feedback Steve. Have you tried using multiple favorites? You could have one favorite for selecting shapes and one for windows. Each could have its own file naming format.
No I hadn’t. Just had a brief look so far, but I’ll look into those.