"ask for text" action in Apple automator does not receive focus automatically

Question

I wrote an Service using Apple's Automator. The first action is an "Ask for Text" action. However, when I trigger the shortcut to initiate the service, the modal asking for text pops up, but it does not have focus. I have to use the mouse to click on it.

Is there any way to have automator open this window with the focus on the text input?

Meander

this is driving me nuts right this very minute. i'll do some more research and if no love i'll start a bounty. – Galvin

Answer 1

Add some applescript to the top of your workflow with the following code. Just replace myapp with your app name

tell application "myapp"
activate
end tell

Ellene

You can also just use 'activate' by itself. – Brasher

I added an applescript action at the top of the workflow that just does "activate" and it works. thanks! – Meander

Answer 2

This is a sort-of, works-for-me, partial answer; instead of using the Ask for text action, I just used an applescript within my automator app (instead of the Ask..action, I used the "Run applescript" action). it looks like this:

on run {input, parameters}

    set x to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter a version number" default answer "1134" buttons {"OK"} default button 1)


    return x
end run

My lil' automator application was to help me enter version numbers for tickets; using the mouse makes my hand hurt. The applescript dialogs seem to have focus properly, so enjoy! Let us know how you do!

Galvin