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Why Your Automator Quick Action Only Shows Up in the Finder

· 5 min read

You built a Quick Action in Automator — convert sounds to MP3, shrink images, send files to a server — and it works: right-click a file in the Finder, and there it is under Quick Actions. Then you right-click the same file in another app, or open its Services menu, and the action is nowhere to be found.

Nothing is broken. The answer is a single menu at the top of the workflow.

The short answer: “in Finder.app”

Every Quick Action starts with a bar that reads Workflow receives current [files or folders] in [any application]. When that last menu says Finder.app, Automator writes a rule into the Quick Action: offer it in the Finder only. macOS follows the rule to the letter and leaves the action out of the Services of every other app — their right-click menus and the Services submenu of their app menu.

So a Finder-only Quick Action isn't missing elsewhere. It was told to stay in the Finder.

Check a Quick Action's setting

Automator saves your Quick Actions in the Services folder of your Library. In the Finder, choose Go to Folder… (⇧⌘G) and type ~/Library/Services: each Quick Action is a .workflow file. Those installed for every user of the Mac are in /Library/Services, and macOS keeps its own in /System/Library/Services.

To read the rule without opening Automator, run this in Terminal, with your Quick Action's name:

plutil -p ~/Library/Services/"Convert to MP3.workflow"/Contents/Info.plist

A Finder-only Quick Action has these lines under NSServices:

"NSRequiredContext" => {
  "NSApplicationIdentifier" => "com.apple.finder"
}

One made for any application has no NSRequiredContext at all. The NSSendFileTypes line tells you what it accepts: public.audio for sounds, public.movie for videos, public.image for pictures, public.item for anything. macOS's own Encode Selected Audio Files and Encode Selected Video Files are Finder-only in exactly this way.

How to make it show up in other apps

Switch “in” to “any application”

  1. In the Finder, right-click the .workflow file and choose Open With › Automator.
  2. In the bar at the top, change in from Finder.app to any application.
  3. Save with ⌘S.

Automator removes the rule, and the Quick Action becomes an ordinary service.

Know what the other app has to give it

A second condition explains most of the “it's still not there”. A Quick Action that receives files or folders appears only where the app in front hands files to services. A text editor or a browser has text selected, not files, so a file action has nothing to work on and macOS doesn't list it. Expect to see it in apps that work with files and support Services.

Make sure it's switched on

Open System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts… › Services. Under Files and Folders, each service has a checkbox; one that is unchecked is hidden everywhere. You can give it a keyboard shortcut there too. In the Finder, Quick Actions › Customize… at the bottom of the right-click menu opens the list of the Finder's Quick Actions, where each one can be switched on or off.

Watch for actions that ask the Finder

If your workflow starts with the action Get Selected Finder Items, it asks the Finder for its selection. In the Finder, those are the files you right-clicked; anywhere else, it brings in whatever happens to be selected in a Finder window. A Quick Action already receives the selection as its input, so that action can usually go.

Keep it Finder-only and run it in Folia Files

You may rather leave a Quick Action alone: you share it, it relies on the Finder, or it's one of macOS's own. If you manage your files in Folia Files, you don't have to change anything. The version from the website reads the same Services folders and lists the Finder-only Quick Actions — the ones macOS keeps out of its Services — in a Quick Actions submenu at the end of its right-click menu, just after Show in Finder.

Folia Files' right-click menu on a video, with Quick Actions at the end, after Show in Finder

It follows the same logic as the Finder:

  • Only what fits the selection. Select a video and you get Encode Selected Video Files; a sound, Encode Selected Audio Files. Select a sound and a video together and neither appears, since each takes only its own kind of file.
  • Folders too. Right-click the empty part of a folder to run an action that takes folders on the folder itself.
  • No duplicates. A Quick Action made for any application is already in the Services submenu that macOS adds at the very end of the menu, as in the Finder, so it isn't repeated under Quick Actions.
  • Your settings count. One you have switched off for context menus in macOS's settings is left out.
  • In your language. Names follow the app's language when the workflow has translations, as macOS's two encoders do.

The Quick Actions submenu for a WAV recording: Encode Selected Audio Files

What happens when you run one

Folia Files hands the selected items to macOS's own automator tool, as files, the way the Finder gives them:

  • The run appears in Operations, the toolbar button that also tracks copies and moves, with the name of the Automator action at work.
  • If the workflow shows a window — the encoders show their options first — it comes to the front, as it does from the Finder. Cancel in that window cancels the operation.
  • The ✕ next to the operation stops it, Automator's worker included.
  • If the workflow fails, you see Automator's own error message.
  • What it makes, usually a new file next to the originals, shows up in the folder when it's done.

It sits with the other tools of the right-click menu, Services and Share among them, described on the file tools page.

Limits worth knowing

  • It's in the version from the website. The App Store version is sandboxed and doesn't offer this submenu.
  • Quick Actions made in the Shortcuts app are a different kind and aren't listed here; a shortcut set to appear in the Services menu shows up under Services instead.
  • Nothing is offered for the files inside a ZIP opened as a folder (it's read-only), or for more than 500 items at once.
  • Don't need the submenu? In Settings › Context Menu, the line Finder Quick Actions (Automator) can stay In the Menu, move to More or be Hidden — see how to customize the right-click menu.

In short

  • A Quick Action set to in Finder.app carries a rule (NSRequiredContext → com.apple.finder) that hides it from every other app's Services.
  • To use it elsewhere, switch it to any application, check it's on in Keyboard Shortcuts › Services, and remember that a file action needs an app that gives it files.
  • Or keep it as it is and run it from Quick Actions in Folia Files' right-click menu.