Windows-like app shortcut w/ command line arguments on Mac

Recently I was wondering how can I create similar shortcut that I used to create on Windows that could launch a desirable application with command line arguments. In my case I just installed awesome email app Postbox and one feature that I started missing is ability to launch Thunderbird-like Profile manager whenever I try to start the app. I tried doing that with aliases with not much of success and learned that OS/X doesn’t have similar concept of shortcuts. After a bit of googling I finally found a solution by Daniel Silva that used Automator app to create a launcher app that would simply run a bash script launching the app. Clever!

  1. Launch Automator (in the Applications folder).
  2. Choose “Application” as the type of document.
  3. Type “shell script” in the filter and double click on “Run Shell Script” to add a shell script to the application.
  4. On the right you will see a text box with the word “cat” in it. Delete this, then type the following command in the text box: open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app –args –disable-images &
  5. Press Apple-s to save it. Name it “Chrome Lite” and put in the Applications folder.
  6. Now find Google Chrome in the Applications folder and single-click it to highlight it (don’t launch the application).
  7. Press Apple-i to get the info window on this application.
  8. Click on the icon inside the info window.
  9. Press Apple-c to copy the icon.
  10. Find the Automator Script you saved in step 6 and singleclick it to highlight it (don’t launch the application).
  11. Press Apple-i to get the info window on this application.
  12. Click on the icon inside the info window.
  13. Press Apple-v to paste the icon.

Daniel’s original instructions can be found here: http://silvanolte.com/blog/2012/05/11/how-to-open-a-mac-os-x-application-with-command-line-arguments/