AppleScript for Visual Studio Code

Important

JXA support has been moved to a separate extension. Please refer to the deprecation notice for details.

Language syntax, snippets and build system for AppleScript.

Installation

Extension Marketplace

Launch Quick Open, paste the following command, and press Enter

ext install idleberg.applescript

CLI

With shell commands installed, you can use the following command to install the extension:

$ code --install-extension idleberg.applescript

Packaged Extension

Download the packaged extension from the release page and install it from the command line:

$ code --install-extension path/to/applescript-*.vsix

Alternatively, you can download the packaged extension from the Open VSX Registry or install it using the ovsx command-line tool:

$ ovsx get idleberg.applescript

Usage

Building

On macOS, you can make use of the following build commands through the command-palette:

• AppleScript: Run Script – Shift ⇧+Option ⌥+R
• AppleScript: Compile Script – Shift ⇧+Option ⌥+B
• AppleScript: Compile Script bundle
• AppleScript: Compile Application

Settings

You can tweak the defaults for this package, osacompile and osascript in the package settings.

Setting	Default	Description
showNotifications	true	Show build notifications indicating success or failure
alwaysShowOutput	false	Specify whether to show the output panel on errors only or on each build
convertErrorRange	false	Convert error range to line/column
defaultBuildTask	"script"	Specify the default build task when creating a new task file
allowMultiTermination	false	Allows the selection of multiple processes to be terminated
osacompile.executeOnly	false	Save the resulting script as execute-only
osacompile.stayOpen	false	Stay open after run handler
osacompile.startupScreen	false	Show startup-screen
osascript.outputStyle	-	The flags argument is a string consisting of any of the modifier characters e, h, o, and s

File Encoding

In prior versions of macOS, the default character encoding for AppleScript text files was Mac Roman; it is now UTF-8.

You can tweak the default file encoding in your Visual Studio Code settings.

Example:

{
	"[applescript]": {
		"files.encoding": "macroman"
	}
}

License

This work is licensed under The MIT License.