How do I get the "percentage completed" to work on Automator apps?

Question

When I create apps with Automator, they run with the little cog that appears in the top right.

When I click the cog it says "0% completed (Run Shell Script)".

This feature is documented sparsely by Apple and I can’t locate a third party example of this and wondered if I can incorporate progress in the menu bar for my scripts.

For example, I run a rsync daemon to backup data every week.

I have an automator app to run this zsh script.

#!/bin/zsh

echo "Starting. $(date)" >> /Users/admin/Scripts/Automation/rsync/rsync.log
open /Users/admin/Scripts/Automation/rsync/notify_starting.app

rsync -r --delete --exclude 'Data 1' --exclude 'Data 2' /Users/admin/Documents /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --delete /Users/admin/2022 /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --max-size=100m --delete /Users/admin/Desktop /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --delete /Users/admin/out_data /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --delete /Users/admin/WESTERFIELD /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --delete /Users/admin/images/2022 /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --delete /Users/admin/Scripts /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync
rsync -r --max-size=100m --delete /Users/admin /Volumes/TOSHIBA/Backups/rsync

echo "Completed. $(date)" >> /Users/admin/Scripts/Automation/rsync/rsync.log
echo "\n\n" >>  /Users/admin/Scripts/Automation/rsync/rsync.log
open /Users/admin/Scripts/Automation/rsync/notify_completed.app

It takes a while to run, and slows the computer down a little. It would be really nice to see how far it's progressed. I get it might not be possible to know exactly, but if I could even know which line of the rsync commands it's reached that would be a start.

Is it possible to change my script to allow for the progess of the programs to change the percentage other than running and done?

Answer 1

See if this helps, in the "Mac Automation Scripting Guide" under the section "Interacting with Users" lists Displaying Progress:

    - Reset the progress information
    set progress total steps to 0
    set progress completed steps to 0
    set progress description to ""
    set progress additional description to ""

So, as you progress through the script, it appears changing these parameters help show the progress in the menu bar. I haven't completed my testing on this. But, this is what I'll be doing.

--

Since I wrote the above answer, I tried it myself. If you have access to running Apple Script, I think still it is valid (therefore I will be testing it further myself).

However, found a quick win too:

percentage="10%"
counter=2
    
osascript -e "display notification \"script completed: ${percentage}\" with title \"Script ${counter} progress\""

Here I have used two variables. Feel free to adjust to your needs. Variables are optional. But I thought it'd be useful.

Secret sauce is the osascript command. You can pass the script command with the -e switch. And get that to run your display notification, which is not the most elegant. But without having to peak at the logs, you can see something around in the GUI now, while you work on other important tasks.

Again, to simplify, the bare-bone command would look something like:

osascript -e "display notification MyMessage with title MyMessageTitle"

A bit more complete version would look like:

osascript -e 'display notification "All graphics have been converted." with title "My Graphic Processing Script" subtitle "Processing is complete." sound name "Frog"'

Hope this helps a bit.

Reference: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/DisplayNotifications.html