What's the difference between background and foreground commands?

Russ

@mnpg, that's a good idea. I'll add that to my todo list and try to do it soon.

EDIT 1/5/2019: It's done in the latest version of the mac agent as of today. Now on a mac you can only select Foreground when you add commands.

tioinfo

@MNPG hello could give an example of command how to open app and website on mac

Russ

@tioinfo, this command should work:

open https://google.com

I added it to the examples for macs.

Sergio Gryciuk

hello could you give an example command to turn off my Imac and tried this "shutdown / s / t 2" in foreground and it doesn't work.

Russ

@Sergio-Gryciuk, I actually recently added Shutdown and a few other Mac examples to GUI Editor's example list. Here it is too:

osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to shut down'

Sergio Gryciuk

Muchas gracias Russ, eres un genio el comando de apagar mi mac funciono perfectamente.

Russ

Awesome @Sergio-Gryciuk, you're welcome.

Kingnabis

I have a question because i cant difference or i dont see the difference about it.
i have two comands, foreground and background one. Both make same (on windows 10) i have a shutdown /s /t 10 and both make same. Maybe this is only for Mac os users usefull?
But basically i cant run apps (native apps), like notepad.exe (foreground of course, but any of two works for me)
I tell on spanish Alexa, open (or run, or nothing, only /notepad/ or /noutpad/ both spechs works) notepad. And it sounds like the comand its suscesfully done but nothnig appears on screen.
Whats my issue?

Russ

@Kingnabis, you're saying you can not run notepad, correct?

I recommend that you try using the TRIGGERcmd Smart Home Alexa skill. It recognizes your voice commands better because it has a list of what you might say ahead of time, so Alexa only has to match up what you say with something in that list.

Is your notepad command setup like this?

When you click the View Runs button,

do you get a Command ran entry in your list?

Kingnabis

Yes, mine was like yours but i was jumping the COMAND part. I need to add START previously to notepad... I udapted like this and it works. I have to write it on cmd, if works there works from the skill.

Kingnabis

adriangcamacho

Hi, any solution to run background commands in mac os?

Russ

@Adrián-González-Camacho, not yet. I didn't think many Mac users would want to use it. Do you want this feature so you can run commands while you're not logged on? Just curious what your use-case is.

adriangcamacho

@Russ I want to use my mac as a server and launch home automation commands

Russ

@adriangcamacho, I see. I assume you don't want to leave it logged in?

I'll have to research again how to create services that startup at boot time on a Mac.

adriangcamacho

@Russ Yep, thank you a lot for your time.
If you need some help i think i could help you i'm backend developer.

TuneyLunes

I'd also like to use my mac as an automation server and it would be easier to not have to be logged in permanently. Thanks @Russ !

Russ

@TuneyLunes, I haven't built this into the Mac agent yet, so for now you can use this method to setup the background agent on a Mac.

Alê 滝口

@Russ Could you give me an example of a command to run a script?

Russ

@Alê-滝口, if the computer is running Mac or Linux, the command could be:

~/yourscript.sh

That assumes you've created a script in your home directory called yourscript.sh.

If the computer is running Windows, the command could be:

c:\scripts\yourscript.bat

That assumes you created a c:\scripts folder, and put yourscript.bat in it.