OS X Messages character counter

With OS X’s Messages app now able to send SMS, some might find it useful to have an idea of how many characters have been typed in the message field.

Here’s a bit of AppleScript and Automator magic that will do that for you. Assign it a hotkey to make it a Service, and you can quickly get a character count with the stroke of a key (alternatively, you can invoke it from the Services menu).

Download ⬇︎.

After downloading, click through to install (it’s code signed, so it should pass GateKeeper’s default settings). For the hotkey, you’ll need to set that up in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, like so:

When you run it for the first time, you may be asked to allow Automator and/or Messages access to System Events in Accessibility here, too:

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how to find old chats/attachments in Messages

To see all your chat messages sorted in folders by date, navigate to

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages

Rather than laboriously copying all that down, an easy way to get to the folder is by tripple-clicking the line above to highlight it. Then control-click on the highlighted text and use the contextual menu to choose Services > Reveal in Finder. Browse through the Archive folder you find therein.

You can also find all your sent and received images and attachments in

~/Library/Messages/Attachments

Of course, they won’t appear if you’ve deleted them. However, if you have Time Machine enabled, you should be able to find even deleted ones in the same places in your T.M backups. Equally, if you don’t have any old messages or attachments or if you’ve just fired up Messages for the first time, these folders may not exist yet.

🙂