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BarCuts › Overview

BarCuts is a macOS menu bar app that surfaces your relevant Shortcuts workflows when you need them. "Tag" workflows to an application, and when that app is in front, BarCuts will show its tagged workflows in a menu, ready for you to access.

This site is the official documentation for BarCuts. It is a work in progress and will be updated as new features are added.

Getting Started

  1. Install the BarCuts app from the website.
  2. Start the app, and follow its guidance on granting permissions to work with your Shortcuts.
  3. Open Shortcuts and start tagging your relevant workflows (using the Tagger) with their related applications.
  4. Switch to one of the tagged applications, and access the relevant workflows via the BarCuts menu bar (or the Alfred workflow, or the Raycast extension).

If you run into problems

In case you have questions, either ask around on our friendly Community Forum – no matter if Shortcuts rookie or pro, you're welcome there, we don't bite! You can also contact me, Carlo (the app's indie developer), by contact form or by email.

If you have a technical issue and opt for the latter, just can also use the Feedback mail button in the app.

Terminology

Workflow
A Shortcuts "program", i.e. what Apple calls (lowercase) "shortcut". Personally, I find this nomenclature somewhat confusing, since on Mac, you can set up a shortcut (keyboard hotkey) for a shortcut (program) in Shortcuts (app). Thus, I use the term "workflow" instead to refer to these programs.

BarCuts allows you to "tag" your Shortcuts workflows with the applications you use them with. This way, you can quickly find the right workflow when you need it. There are several subsets of all your Shortcuts workflows that are mentioned in this documentation:

Tagged workflows
Those that contain the BarCuts Tagger action.
Active workflows
Those that contain the BarCuts Tagger action and whose Application parameter is set to the app that is currently in front. This list changes dynamically as you switch between applications.
Global workflows / Always available workflows
Those that contain the BarCuts Tagger action but are not tagged to a particular application. These workflows are always available in the menu, regardless of the currently active application.

Visual markers throughout the documentation

Links to actions, objects, and parameters are visually marked with a colored tag. This way, you can easily spot them in the text and know what you're looking at. For example, Get Workflows is a link to an action, Browser Tab is a link to an object, and Placement in menu links to an action's parameter (usually on the same docs page).

Parameter options which can be selected from a predefined list are underlaid with "a quiet background color".