UI Actions › Actions › Select Menu Item Either/Or
From two given menu options, the action will select the first available option. This is useful for menu items that change their title depending on the UI state. For example, consider “Show Tab Bar” and “Hide Tab Bar” in Finder, where either the former or the latter is available.
If the element is a menu or submenu, that will open the menu. If the element is a menu item, its related function will be called.
Parameters
App
Select the app which the menu belongs to.
Type: An app from a pre-defined list of available apps
Targeting options
You can look up a menu item or sub menu by either …
- its title, e.g.
Contacts… - its path, e.g.
Edit > AutoFill > Contacts… - its segmented path, e.g.
Edit,AutoFill,Contacts…
A menu path is a single string containing the path segments separated by ”>“.
Leading and trailing whitespace in segments is stripped. The lookup deals gracefully with segments ending in either an ellipses or triple dots, if either variant exists in the menu structure, it’ll be found.
Options:
- title
- path
- segmented path
Optional Menu item title
The menu item label as it occurs in the actual menu. Depending on the selected filter criteria, a partial title might be enough.
Type: Text
Title filter criteria
Only available when searching by title.
Options:
- is
- contains
- begins with
- ends with
- matches regular expression
Case-insensitive filtering
Enable if lowercase and uppercase shouldn’t make a difference. Only available when searching by title or path.
Type: Boolean (YES/NO)
Optional Menu item path #1
The menu item’s hierarchical path, starting at the main menu, separated by ”>” characters, e.g. View > Translation > Translate to German.
Type: Text
Optional Main menu title #1
The first segment of a menu item’s path, e.g. View or Edit etc.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #1.1
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #1.2
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #1.3
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #1.4
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Menu item title #2
The menu item label as it occurs in the actual menu. Depending on the selected filter criteria, a partial title might be enough.
Type: Text
Optional Menu item path #2
The menu item’s hierarchical path, starting at the main menu, separated by ”>” characters, e.g. View > Translation > Translate to German.
Type: Text
Optional Main menu title #2
The first segment of a menu item’s path, e.g. View or Edit etc.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #2.1
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #2.2
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #2.3
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
Optional Sub-menu or item #2.4
The next segment of the menu item’s path.
Type: Text
If neither can be found
If neither menu item couldn’t be found, the action can either cancel the workflow and raise an error, or it could silently and gracefully just return nothing. This might be preferable if you don’t want the workflow to stop while being able to check for its return value in an If block down the line.
On success, it returns a reference to the selected menu item which can be used as input in other menu actions of UI Actions.
Options:
- stop and raise error
- return no value
Pause after selecting
This adds a short pause after selecting the menu item.
Options:
- no pause
- 0.2 secs
- 0.5 secs
- 1.0 secs
- 1.5 secs
- 2.0 secs
- 3.0 secs
- 4.0 secs
Return Value
Related Links
- Search the UI Actions community forum for "Select Menu Item Either/Or"