A simple time saving tip that I’ve found useful is to quit open Applications without switching to them first. I’ve got two time saving ways to accomplish that task, first through Mac OS X’s built in Application switcher (Command + Tab) and secondly the Mac OS X Dock.

The Application switcher built into OS X and accessible through Command + Tab, this allows you to quickly switch between open Applications. By striking Command + Tab once and holding down the Command key you’ll see something like the screenshot above with icons for each running Application on your Mac. Pressing Tab again will cycle forward through the list while Shift + Tab will go backwards. A nifty trick is to hit the Q key while you have an Application highlighted in the Application switcher; you’ll notice that the icon fades out, the Application has just quit.

Using Mac OS X’s Dock is also an easy shortcut for quitting Applications. Right-click an open Application and choose Quit from the menu. If you’ve got an Application that has locked up and is not responding right-clicking the Application’s Dock icon will reveal a Force Quit option (much easier than opening the Force Quit window).

Automator is a powerful application provided by Apple on every copy of Mac OS X. Although every Mac has Automator installed most users have never experimented with it, and that’s the goal of this article: to introduce you to Automator.

Automator is location in your Applications folder (/Applications/Automator.app), when Automator is opened you’ll get a workflow template chooser. Custom will start you off with a blank workflow, allowing you to add your own actions.

This is meant to be a simple article on Automator, and as such I’ll show the steps required to make a basic Automator workflow that will quit all of our open applications. (I use three primary Automator workflows, one to open my favorite applications (the ones I leave running), one to quit all applications, and finally one to put my Mac Pro to sleep.)

The workflow I’m showing you today will be based off of a Custom workflow. The screenshot below shows a empty workflow in Automator.

In the search box above the list of available actions type “quit” and Automator will show you a few actions, the one named Quit All Applications is the one we are interested in for this article. Drag the action Quit All Applications over to the blank workflow space on the right.

In the workflow pane you’ll notice a new action, the Quit All Applications action and that it has several options. 

Now we want to add some applications to the list for the action to skip over, that is, to not quit them. Click the Add… button and choose a few applications, I would suggest Safari if you are following along here. For my list I added Quicksilver and Safari, as example applications.

To get a little visual feedback, and assuming you have Growl installed, we are going to add an action named Show Growl Notification. Just as before, we are going to drag the item into the workflow pane to the right, position this notification under the existing Quit All Applications action. Give it a title and description.

You can test run your workflow by clicking the Run toolbar item in the top right corner of the Automator application (first make sure that you’ve added Safari to the Do not quit list). If you have Growl installed and added its action you’ll get a nice confirmation when its complete.

To save our workflow so we can open it at any time, choose Save As… from the File menu. Give it a name and choose Application for the File Format.

Once your workflow is saved, go to the folder you saved it to and launch your workflow. You’ll notice that by saving the workflow as an Application we can open it without having Automator open.

If you like the idea of having an application to quit all your open applications, you may want to edit the workflow to include Safari in the Quit All Applications action.

It’s easy to edit your Automator workflow, reopen Automator and choose the Open an Existing Workflow… option at startup. Choose your workflow from the list (the .app) and Automator will import all your actions. From now on when your editing a saved Automator application you don’t need to Save As…, simply saving the application is enough to update your workflow.

Automator and Quicksilver are a powerful combo, on my Mac Pro I used an add-on action called Sleep to quickly sleep the computer (I’ve found this easier than reaching for the power button or choosing it from the menu).

Apple also has a great getting started article on Automator, Mac 101: Automator.