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@christopheranderton
Last active February 3, 2024 17:45
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Add a simple ”Touch” Service to your context menu (Right-Click Menu) in MacOS X (Tested in Mac OS X 10.10.5, but should work in older and newer versions as well) with Automator.app
  1. Open up Automator.app located in your Applications folder.
  2. Choose ”Service” in the dialog sheet when creating a new document.
  3. In the Services receives selected: menu at the top of the ”Canvas” on the right, change to ”Files & Folders”.
  4. In the sidebar to the left, search for Get Selected Finder Items
  5. Drag this Action to the ”canvas” on the right side.
  6. Again, go to the sidebar at the left and this time search for Run Shell Script
  7. Drag the Run Shell Script action to the ”canvas” on the right side.
  8. At the right in the Run Shell Script action, change the Pass input from to stdin to as arguments
  9. Copy paste this into the action text box, removing the Cat command in the text box:
for f in "$@"
do
	touch "$f"
done

Save the Service into /Users/yourusername/Library/Services. Test it by select a file(s) or folder(s) in the Finder and Right-Click and go to end at the Context menu labeled ”Services” and look for the name you gave your Service. If everything works alright, the selected file(s) or folder(s) should have updated modification dates. It doesn't alter the file(s) or folder(s) except the modification date.

@toddaeverett
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Thanks! Worked perfect.

@harry-at-cogwrite
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Hard to believe it took me years to find this Hard to believe this is so easy. Amazed I never set aside a couple days to dig into Automator.app! So powerful!

@bladerun16
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Thanks, simple and clever!

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