Monday, April 28, 2014

Setting up podcast alarms for your mac

Quick notes on how to configure your mac so that you can wake up to podcasts/get podcasts to play every hr etc.
  1. make a podcast playlist on itunes
    1.  create a smart playlist from your musics tab as follows (I called mine "New Podcasts") 
    2. you probably want to configure the podcast settings so that you only keep the most recent episode (otherwise say for NPR hourly podcasts, your playlist will include multiple podcasts from NPR hourly)
  2. create an application with automator
    1. create a new application and save it somewhere
    2. search for itunes and put "get specified itunes times" into the right side (then add your playlist u just made)
    3. search for itunes and put "play itunes playlist" into the right side
    4. this is how it should look at the end.
  3. system preferences -> users & groups -> login items: add your automator application to get it to run on login
    1. to get computer to automatically turn on, system preferences -> energy saver -> schedule -> startup/wakeup every day at xyz time
  4. go to calendar and add repeating items for daily/hourly runs
    1. create a new event, make it repeat
    2. go to the alerts -> custom -> open file. and instead of opening calendar, open the application
  5. to automatically download/get the most recent podcasts, the easiest would probably be to write an applescript, then export it as an application (and then schedule to run it right before your podcast alarm)