Shell Scripts

Run shell commands and scripts with your selected text.

Basic Shell Script

Shell script actions execute commands in your default shell (typically bash or zsh).

echo '{text}' | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'

This converts selected text to uppercase.

Using Placeholders

See Placeholders for all available placeholders.

Common Patterns

Transform and copy to clipboard:

echo '{text}' | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' | pbcopy

Transform and paste back:

echo '{text}' | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' | pbcopy && {paste}

tip

Instead of using osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down', you can simply use {paste} placeholder for a cleaner script!

Examples

Text Transformation

Uppercase:

echo '{text}' | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' | pbcopy && {paste}

Lowercase:

echo '{text}' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | pbcopy && {paste}

Reverse text:

echo '{text}' | rev | pbcopy && {paste}

Remove whitespace:

echo '{text}' | tr -d ' ' | pbcopy && {paste}

Encoding

Base64 encode:

echo -n '{text}' | base64 | pbcopy && {paste}

URL encode:

python3 -c "import urllib.parse; print(urllib.parse.quote('{text}'))" | pbcopy && {paste}

Developer Tools

Format JSON:

echo '{text}' | python3 -m json.tool | pbcopy

Count words:

echo '{text}' | wc -w | tr -d ' '

Tips

Escaping Special Characters

OnText handles most special characters automatically, but complex scripts may need extra escaping.

Long Scripts

For complex scripts, consider creating a shell script file and calling it:

/path/to/your/script.sh '{text}'