Mac.sis making macs and S60 handsets talk

While the built-in Send File... and Browse Device items on the Mac Bluetooth menu are quite OK for occasional BT file shuffling, a hardcore BT addict might require a bit more. When browsing files with Finder, for instance, it would be rather convenient to quickly select a file and to push it over to a BT device (such as an S60 handset) with minimal hassle.

This is where the Mac-non-programmer equivalent of a Swiss army knife (with a bundled kitchen sink), Automator, becomes handy. Bluetooth actions are not available by default, but the nice folks at Framework Labs are offering a free (as in beer and free as in speech) Automator action for exactly this purpose: Bluetooth Object Push Automator Action.

The package comes in the form of an installer that copies the action to $HOME/Library/Automator, after which it should be detected by Automator. Please make sure that you get the latest (at the time of writing version 1.2) of the action, as an older one I grabbed from elsewhere failed to show up in Automator.

With the action installed, go ahead and create e.g. the following simple Automator action:

If you do not select the Predefined Device option, the action will prompt you for a BT device when run.

When done, select Save as Plug-in... from the Automator File menu and select Finder in the Plug-in for option menu. Lo and behold, your Finder has now gained a new feature in the Automator section of the contextual menu for sending stuff directly to a BT device. Now that wasn't hard, no?

Update 2007-05-03: As pointed out in the comments (thanks!), there is another hidden mechanism for achieving almost the same effect: select an item and hit +SHIFT+B. OS X will prompt you for a BT device and send the file via BT. The plugin approach still has the advantage of allowing you to predefine a particular device, avoiding one extra step.