I started off understanding Snippets with reference to the 2009 post XMenu 1.9 and Snippets where a Devontechnologies person said, “To select a snippet for insertion into a text document, click on the Snippet icon in the menu bar and choose the desired one. It will be inserted at the cursor insertion position in the (frontmost) text document – in whatever application you are using.” To me that says if you click on a snippet, its content should—with no additional action on my part—appear at the cursor position in the document in which I am working.
The help menu for Snippets says, “when you select them…their content is inserted into the current application if no modifier key is pressed.” Seems to imply the same as the 2009 post; select one and bingo, it appears in the document.
The file automatically appearing in Snippets when you activate Snippets says: “Drag the selected text into the Finder folder that opens.” That’s not the same as what was stated in 2009 and in the help menu. Now I presumably have to drag the snippet to where I want it to be put.
I opened a TextEdit document, then went to Snippets in XMenu and clicked on the “Drag the selected text” snippet expecting it to paste as per the 2009 information and the current help menu. No go. I then tried dragging that file to the TextEdit window as per the information in the clippings file itself. Again no go. Finally what worked was I clicked on a snippet file to choose it and then pasted it into my TextEdit file. Snippets basically cuts out having to open the file and copying the content before pasting the content. Snippets isn’t behaving on my system as the documentation says it should, or the documentation need some updating please.
The file automatically appearing in Snippets when you activate Snippets says: “Drag the selected text into the Finder folder that opens.”
Please post where you’re reading this.
The documentation isn’t incorrect or out of date on the functionality. macOS’ gatekeeper controls automation requests and prompts, e.g., “Allow XMenu to control System Events?”. It is not a bullet-proof mechanism Apple built. We don’t have any control over if the OS issues these prompts not can you manually add an application to the Automation permissions.
I still don’t know if having to paste it is normal behavior, or if it should just insert my selected clipping or TextEdit content (I just use plain text and I added a TextEdit file to the folder when testing, also with no result other than with paste) after selecting the Snippets entry. I was gathering the latter was the case, but since I am not seeing that I wanted to make sure.
This is a screenshot of my Snippets folder just after activating Snippets in XMenu:
Here’s what Snippets > XMenu > Help > XMenu Help > How To Use > Customize > paragraph on Snippets, says:
The sentence implies that if I select an item, the content is automatically inserted in my document. It doesn’t say I have to paste it.
I have been using XMenu for several years now but I have never looked at Snippets until now. All I did was activate Snippets in XMenu today, then I read the Help information in Snippets as well as the post I provided earlier. I know Apple has increasingly been clamping down on what third party utilities can do, but I am seeing no notifications if that is to what you are referring. I had already given XMenu permission in Settings > Privacy & Security > App Management, as well as full disk access.I do not remember seeing anything referring to “System Events”, nor does a search in Settings reveal anything with that name (I am using Sequoia 15.6).
I changed from High Sierra to Sequoia a few weeks ago. I think XMenu carried over, though I then updated it to the newest available. Maybe that file is from an older version?
I am simply reporting what I read from XMenu developers since I don’t know how it should behave, and what is happening when I try to use it.
I looked in Settings > Privacy&Security and checked Automation. XMenu isn’t there and there’s no way to add applications to the list. I then checked Accessibility and added XMenu, making sure it was turned on (I am always leery of the “control your computer” phrasing). I then quit XMenu and started it again. No change in behavior.
I am sorry but we seem to have problems communicating. As I posted earlier,: “This is a screenshot of my Snippets folder just after activating Snippets in XMenu” I am seeing that text when I open the clipping file that was present in my Snippets folder when I first created it. It is basically telling somebody how to create a clippings file (I have been helping other people with mac OS for 30 years now ).
I guess I still haven’t had a clear statement as to whether or not simply selecting the file by clicking on it once in the Snippets menu is supposed to automatically paste its contents in my active documents application (in this case a blank TextEdit file). From the working in the Help feature I am getting the impression it should do that but that is not what I am seeing and I wanted to get clear confirmation that is what i should be seeing. I am relatively new to Sequoia and I never know if something has stopped working the way I am used to because it is no longer done that way, or if there’s an issue.
I have done everything I could think of to grant XMenu permissions to get around security issues. If you can think of anything more then I would be happy to try. Please post specific directions since as I said earlier, I do not see any Settings that include the phrase “system events”. I understand what you mean by those (I do some Applescripting myself) but when I search for the term in the Setting search menu it comes up with nothing.
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