Is There a Way to Send an "Enter" Key to Messages.app in Big Sur?

[gardenway]

I see that imessage action does not work on Big Sur.

If I open the messages app and then start a text macro to type text, is it possible to create a message directly in the messages application?

For example, my action can send the name of the recipient: John Doe and then the enter key.

if I do this from the keyboard by typing "John Doe", messages will find john Doe in my contacts and insert that into the send list.

however, I with my text macro (typing or pasting), messages never sees the enter key to actually resolve the name into a contact.

I have tried sending as '\n', or ';', but have not found a key sequence that triggers the resolve of the name into a contact.

Any suggestions?

[gardenway]

I found a solution:
Insert text by typing:
John Doe\t
Delay 1.5 seconds
Insert text by typing:
\n
I will play around with the delay to see how short I can make it. This will allow me to fill the to line, which is what I needed.

[gardenway]

This is proving to be unrelieable. If someone has a script that will do this, I will be interested. I want to sent to a group of people.

[tjluoma]

Will it always be the same group of people or do you want to be able to select several names at will? Can you be a bit more explicit about what you are trying to do? That might help.

[gardenway]

I want to be able to send group texts to specific people. If I could create groups in messages, that would be sufficient.

So, yes, the people will generally be a specific set. I can create a different macro for each group which would not exceed 10 or so groups.

[NaOH]

@gardenway

If I could create groups in messages, that would be sufficient.

Groups created in Contacts can be used as a launching point for sending messages with CardHop. I share that as a last resort just because it's additional paid software (US $20), though there is a free trial available if you get near that decision.

Cardhop

[tjluoma]

I tried this a bit and cannot get it to work on Big Sur. I even tried installing the imessage-ruby package in brew ¹ but it does not reliably send messages to more than one contact, and hasn’t been updated in several years, so I think the chances of it working with Big Sur are slim-to-none.

I cannot even figure out how to enter multiple recipients in Messages. Once you enter one person to send it to, the insertion point jumps down to the message area.

As far as Cardhop goes… I can figure out how to send a group email with Cardhop, but Contacts.app has the same ability. If Cardhop can start a group iMessage/SMS, it was not obvious how.

Unfortunately right now I don’t think this is possible on macOS. Ironically it would probably be easy on iOS using Shortcuts.

---

¹ GitHub - linjunpop/imessage: Send iMessages from command-line

[NaOH]

@tjluoma

As far as Cardhop goes… I can figure out how to send a group email with Cardhop, but Contacts.app has the same ability. If Cardhop can start a group iMessage/SMS, it was not obvious how.

I'm running OS X 10.11.6, which runs the same CardHop version as Big Sur, and once CardHop is invoked I can type

text [group name]

to initiate a message to all contacts within a group.

[ccstone]

Hey TJ,

Drop Messages on the Applescript Editor in Big Sur, and see if it has an AppleScript dictionary. I think I've read that Apple removed all AppleScript support from it, and that explains why the Keyboard Maestro action doesn't work anymore.

It probably means CardHop won't work with Messages either – at least beyond the url-scheme.

-Chris

[tjluoma]

@ccstone

I think I've read that Apple removed all AppleScript support from it, and that explains why the Keyboard Maestro action doesn't work anymore.

There is an AppleScript dictionary for Messages.app in Big Sur, but unfortunately I don’t know enough about AppleScript to understand what it is offering.

There are both “Standard Suite” and “Messages Suite” available.

[NaOH]

Regarding CardHop, there's an additional suggestion for using it for sending Group messages in another Forum thread from a year ago:

Send SMS to a Group?

In lockdown, I'm often needing to send a message to a specific group of coworkers, some of whom are on android. We have a long text thread going in Messages, but I'd like to automate the process. I have tried the SMS action in KM, which seems to work well for one phone number. I cannot figure out how to do it for multiple at once. (I realize this may be a limitation of the underlying AppleScript action, as I've tried to also do it via AS, and can not crack it for multiple recipients either.) I…

[ccstone]

@tjluoma

There is an AppleScript dictionary for Messages.app

Hey Folks,

TJ was kind enough to send me the Application.sdef file for the Big Sur version of Messages.

Its AppleScript dictionary is horribly truncated compared to Messages on my macOS 10.12.6 Sierra system.

People should complain to Apple if they want things to change.

-Chris

[richtack]

FWIW, I did a work-around in a similar way that has been reliable for me. I'm doing it all by manually reproducing the steps that I would be doing myself in messages to start a new thread.

Even though I already had a group name for this text thread, I have to use each of their names so that it resolves to the correct contact.

I think the trick, for me, was doing a slight pause between pasting the name and the Return keystroke. Even when I had the delays in between at .2 seconds, it was not working reliably.

Messages does then find the last thread with the three of us, so I'm not starting new conversations in the messages list.

Because this is replicating a manual process, I don't know how this would scale to 10 people!