applescript safari open url in current tab

AppleScript Safari URL tip: How to open multiple URLs in Safari tabs

Well, I set out to write a simple tip on how to activate a Mac application using AppleScript, and I ended up writing a program to open a list of URLs in separate tabs in Safari using AppleScript. (Yeesh, I really took a detour. Oh, well.)

Without any further ado, here's the source code for this AppleScript program:

Brief description of the code

Here's a brief description of what this AppleScript program does:

• urlList is a simple list with the URLs I want Safari to open.
• The repeat statement starts the loop.
• I'm clicking File :: New Tab using the System Events because I can't figure out how to get this to work by calling Safari directly. (I'm currently using Safari 3.0.3.)
• The keystroke command types the URL into Safari.
• key code 36 is needed to hit the [Enter] key.

Again, I had to take a few extra steps here because I couldn't script the tabs in Safari directly. Ideally code like this would have worked inside the tell application "Safari" statement:

Hopefully that support will be available in the future, or, if I'm mistaken, please send me an email and I will correct this program.

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Open URL in New Safari Tab

imac, Mac OS X (10.6.6), None

Posted on Mar 3, 2011 2:14 PM

Posted on Mar 3, 2011 2:31 PM

Also how to I format these posts so that my code looks like code,

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Mar 3, 2011 2:31 PM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 4, 2011 9:35 AM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 4, 2011 2:26 PM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 4, 2011 3:04 PM in response to Tony T1

Mar 4, 2011 4:56 PM in response to MartinLiss

MartinLiss wrote: Thanks but there's a problem in that your code always opens theURL in a new window.

Mar 4, 2011 9:46 PM in response to Tony T1

Mar 5, 2011 6:20 AM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 5, 2011 8:49 AM in response to Tony T1

Mar 5, 2011 9:22 AM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 5, 2011 9:31 AM in response to Tony T1

Mar 5, 2011 10:30 AM in response to MartinLiss

Mar 5, 2011 12:30 PM in response to Tony T1

Jul 24, 2011 1:21 PM in response to MartinLiss

Now that I've upgraded to Lion and its new version of Safari, this no longer works

set theURL to " https://www.airset.com/AirSet.jsp#gi.lkCezQTmARbJ+app.Calendar_v.month+t.today "

tell application "Safari"

tell application "System Events"

tell process "Safari"

-- System Preferences|Universal Access|'Enable access for assistive devices' must be selected for the following to work

click menu item "New Tab" of menu "File" of menu bar 1

set currentTab to current tab of window 1

set URL of document 1 to theURL

tell window 1 to set current tab to make new tab with properties { URL : theURL }

open location theURL

When Safari is already open It just gives me a new tab called 'Untitled' and the URL says 'Go to this address'. My first thought was that the Universal Access setting ahdn't been carried over and sure enough I had to set it again but it didn't help.

Jul 24, 2011 3:38 PM in response to MartinLiss

I'm embarrased. I didn't notice that the tell Application... code was commented out since it wasn't needed and I only kept it there for reference, so let me re-ask my question. Under Snow Lepeord the following gives me a new tab with the correct URL while under Lion I have the problem described above.

Jul 24, 2011 3:45 PM in response to MartinLiss

Problem solved.

tell window 1 to set current tab to make new tab --with properties {URL:theURL}

applescript

• Getting started with applescript
• AppleScript Browser Interactions
• Applescript from the Terminal command line
• Get the current URL in Safari or Google Chrome
• Get the Title of the current page in Safari or Google Chrome
• Use an Applescript as a shell function
• AppleScript User Interaction
• AppleScript Variable Types
• Making Applescript If and Else Statements

applescript Applescript from the Terminal command line Get the current URL in Safari or Google Chrome

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set question to display dialog ("Find Safari tab:") default answer ""

set searchpat to text returned of question

tell application "Safari"

set winlist to every window

set winmatchlist to {}

set tabmatchlist to {}

set tabnamematchlist to {}

repeat with win in winlist

set ok to true

set tablist to every tab of win

on error errmsg

--display dialog name of win as string

set ok to false

repeat with t in tablist

if searchpat is in ( name of t as string ) then

set end of winmatchlist to win

set end of tabmatchlist to t

set end of tabnamematchlist to ( id of win as string ) & "." & ( index of t as string ) & ".   " & ( name of t as string )

--display dialog name of t as string

else if searchpat is in ( URL of t as string ) then

if ( count of tabmatchlist ) = 1 then

--display dialog "one!"

set w to item 1 of winmatchlist

set t to item 1 of tabmatchlist

set current tab of w to t

set index of w to 1

else if ( count of tabmatchlist ) = 0 then

display dialog "No matches"

set whichtab to choose from list of tabnamematchlist with prompt "The following tabs match, please select one:"

set AppleScript 's text item delimiters to "."

if whichtab is not equal to false then

set tmp to text items of ( whichtab as string )

set w to ( item 1 of tmp ) as integer

set t to ( item 2 of tmp ) as integer

set current tab of window id w to tab t of window id w

set index of window id w to 1

Using AppleScript to open a URL in Private Browsing in Safari

• Posted 24 June 2020
• Tagged with applescript , macos , macos:safari

I have a bunch of automations that open URLs.

If I want to open a regular window in Safari (my default browser), I have a variety of options – I can use open(1) on the command-line, or the webbrowser module in Python, or with AppleScript, or probably half a dozen other methods I haven’t thought of.

If I want to open a private browsing window, my options are more limited. The Safari AppleScript dictionary doesn’t know about private browsing, and all the other approaches I’ve seen are just passing Safari the URL to open. They can’t give it any instructions beyond “please open this URL”.

If you ask Google, there are lots of suggestions, but I struggled to find good code. Many of the results are broken, slow, or incomplete (they open the private browsing window, but not any URLs).

Rather than wade through more Google results, I came up with my own script for doing it, which opens the window and the URL:

I save this as a script in my $PATH and mark it as executable, and then I can open a new private browsing window from anywhere by running:

When you run this code, you may get an error (or a silent failure if you trigger it through a GUI rather than a terminal):

open_private_browsing:114:232: execution error: System Events got an error: osascript is not allowed assistive access. (-1719)

This is the macOS security system kicking in: it doesn’t let arbitrary scripts or applications click menu items in other applications. To allow this script to work, open the Security & Privacy preference pane. Under Accessibility , allow access to whatever application is triggering the script (in my case, iTerm 2), and it should be good.

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How can I use AppleScript to open a new Safari window on the current desktop space?

I need to open a new Safari window in the current desktop space using AppleScript. NOT move to another space which has Safari running and then open another Safari window.

Of course, if Safari is not running then it should start a new Safari process in the current space.

• applescript

You can put the following code into the apple script editor and save the file as application .

Now you can simply double click on the script and you will be able to open a new safari window inside of the current "active" space, even though you may have another safari window open in another desktop space. It will not switch.

• I have this script, but it opens the new window on the space where Safari is currently activated, not on my currently active desktop space. –  Josiah Sprague Mar 7, 2014 at 12:21
• Actually, sometimes it opens two new Safari windows. One on my current desktop, and one on another desktop, which it then switches to. I can't figure out why more than one new document would be created. I am using an Alfred shortcut to call the script. –  Josiah Sprague Mar 7, 2014 at 12:26
• Really? What version of OSX are you running? When I put Safari in my 4th desktop and I goto my 2nd Desktop with nothing opened up on it and run the above script I get a new Safari window on my 2nd Desktop. When I check back to my 4th Desktop it still has the same window I originally opened (no extra). I am running OSX 10.7.5. –  kevin Mar 7, 2014 at 18:23
• I'm using 10.9.2. It could be a conflict with Alfred or TotalSpaces2 I suppose. I'll keep playing around with it. –  Josiah Sprague Mar 7, 2014 at 22:06
• Hmm...it is certainly a possibly there may be 3rd party interference. If you are seeing 2 windows popup after running the script, a quick and dirty way to check if its coming from your script is add say "I am opening new window now" as the 2nd line. You'll be able to hear when your script is running and at least you tell if your script is for some reason running twice, hence the 2 windows popping up instead of one. –  kevin Mar 8, 2014 at 4:16

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