Shell Scripts

Run shell commands and scripts with your selected text.

Basic Shell Script

Shell script actions execute commands with /bin/zsh. Selected text is available as the ONTEXT_TEXT environment variable.

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'

This converts selected text to uppercase.

Passing User Input Safely

User-controlled values are passed separately from the command source:

Value	Environment variable
Selected text	ONTEXT_TEXT
Selected text captured with Cmd+C	ONTEXT_TEXT_WITH_COPY
Clipboard snapshot	ONTEXT_CLIPBOARD
Prompt input	ONTEXT_PROMPT_1, ONTEXT_PROMPT_2, ...

Always put the variable expansion in double quotes, such as "$ONTEXT_TEXT". Do not insert {text}, {clipboard}, or {prompt} directly into a Shell command. OnText offers to migrate older actions when they run.

ONTEXT_CLIPBOARD follows a text-first policy: when a clipboard item contains both text and image or rich-content formats, OnText uses the text representation. The action stops only when the clipboard has no text representation.

See Placeholders for the action-specific syntax.

Common Patterns

Transform and copy to clipboard:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' | pbcopy

Transform and paste back:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_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:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' | pbcopy && {paste}

Lowercase:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | pbcopy && {paste}

Reverse text:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | rev | pbcopy && {paste}

Remove whitespace:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | tr -d ' ' | pbcopy && {paste}

Encoding

Base64 encode:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | base64 | pbcopy && {paste}

URL encode:

python3 -c 'import os, urllib.parse; print(urllib.parse.quote(os.environ["ONTEXT_TEXT"]))' | pbcopy && {paste}

Developer Tools

Format JSON:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | python3 -m json.tool | pbcopy

Count words:

printf '%s' "$ONTEXT_TEXT" | wc -w | tr -d ' '

Migrating Older Shell Actions

When an older Shell action inserts a user-content placeholder directly into the command, OnText shows a review dialog before running it. The dialog displays the original command and the version that uses quoted ONTEXT_* environment variables. Choosing Migrate & Run saves the migrated action and then runs it. Choosing Cancel leaves the action unchanged and does not run it.

OnText does not guess how to rewrite legacy placeholders inside command substitution ($()), backticks, ANSI-C quoted strings ($'...'), or heredocs. In those cases the action is not run, and OnText asks you to replace the placeholder manually with the appropriate quoted environment variable.

Tips

Preserve the exact value

Prefer printf '%s' over echo. printf does not interpret text that begins with options or contains backslash sequences.

Long Scripts

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

/path/to/your/script.sh "$ONTEXT_TEXT"