I guess most Mac users know about services, a submenu off the main application menu (top of the screen next to the blue apple), but how many actually use it on a day to day basis? Not many I would guess.

But services are our friend! Many applications silently add an option to the services menu which allow us to interact with the application whatever we are doing. There are also many built in for standard Macs apps like Mail, TextEdit etc.

Example. There’s a nice little app called FontExampler. It just takes some sample text and generates a list of that text in all available fonts. It’s a great way to find the right font face for that article you are doing. What I didn’t realise is that it adds a service as well.

With FontExampler installed, just highlight some text, go to the services menu and choose ‘generate font example’. In a jiffy FontExampler loads and displays the highlighted text in each font on your system. Neat.

This is just one simple example, there’s plenty more so go and explore!

(Note to self – I really must get out more!)

Update: try these extra services…

dotfiles to toggle hidden files and desktop files.
WordService and many more from Devon Technologies.

Update 2: more text based services from TextWielder

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