Sidekick Guide
Sidekick keeps track of where in the world you are and makes sure your laptop is ready for work, play, or whatever else you need it to do. It does this using two main concepts, Places and Actions, both of which can be configured by clicking Sidekick’s menu bar icon and choosing “Configure…”.
You can also find help about the Show Map… window, installing and using plugins, registering Sidekick, and uninstalling Sidekick.
Sidekick prefers to use the location services built into OS X to automatically determine where you are. The first time it tries to find your location, OS X will ask you whether it’s okay to tell Sidekick where you are; Sidekick won’t be able to use location services unless you say yes.
If you want even finer-grained control over your location, Sidekick offers advanced location tweaking through Addresses, Networks, and Devices—Sidekick will use all three to identify your Place.
If you have privacy concerns with using OS X’s location services, it is also possible to set up Places exclusively using Networks and/or Devices. Please note, however, that using OS X’s location services is generally more reliable and less likely to be foiled by a superficial change like your coffee shop changing the name of its wireless network.
To add a Place to Sidekick, open the Configure window by going to the Sidekick icon in the menu bar and clicking Configure…. Then click the Add Place bar at the bottom left of the window and name the new Place that appears in the sidebar. From there, you can start adding Addresses, Networks, and Devices to narrow that Place down even further or add Actions Sidekick should take when you arrive there.
Sometimes you may want to apply the Actions for a different Place than the one you’re currently in. To do that, just click Sidekick’s menu bar icon and click the Place that has the settings you want to apply.
You can always see the locations of all your places on a map by clicking Sidekick’s menu bar icon and clicking Show Map….
You can set a single Place to include multiple physical addresses. This is especially useful if you want Sidekick to take certain Actions anywhere on a college or corporate campus.
To set an address, you can either drop a pin in the map view and drag it to where you want it, or click the Advanced button, choose Addresses, click the + button, and type in the address by hand.
To remove an address, you can either click its pin and press the Delete key or click it in the Advanced view and press the Delete key. In either case, you can also right-click it and choose Delete.
You can set a Place to include a certain wireless network or an Ethernet connection, or even a particular IP address. This is especially useful if two or more locations are physically close to one another, but you want Sidekick to take different Actions at each one.
To add a network connection, click the Advanced button, choose Networks, click the + button, and choose Airport or Ethernet. If you choose Airport, you will be able to add the name of the wireless network. In either case, you will be able to specify an IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.1) or a range of IP addresses (e.g., 192.168.*.*).
To remove a network connection, click it in the Advanced view and press the Delete key or right-click it and choose Delete.
You can set a Place to include one or more physical devices. This is especially useful when you want Sidekick to take different Actions depending on whether you’ve connected certain pieces of hardware—for example, if you want to set the brightness and sound as soon as you get home, but only want to back up using Time Machine when you connect a certain hard drive.
To add a device, clicked the Advanced button, choose Devices, click the + button, and choose the device in question. Feel free to change the name of the device once you’ve added it.
To remove a device, click it in the Advanced view and press the Delete key or right-click it and choose Delete.
Actions are all the different things Sidekick can do to make sure your laptop is always ready to work with you—everything from changing screen brightness or volume to running a particular application or script.
Actions are divided into two main kinds: Application Actions and System Actions. You can also add support for Actions not built into Sidekick by default using Plugins.
To add an Action for a particular place, open the Configuration window and make sure you have selected the Place you want to add it to—for example, Home. Then just click the Add Action bar at the bottom of the window and choose the Action you want.
Once added, you can move an Action from one Place to another by simply dragging it to the new Place in the sidebar.
Application Actions launch or influence only one application rather than your whole system.
Opens the specified URL in the appropriate application. This doesn’t necessarily mean opening a website in a browser; it can also be used with other URLs—for example, aim:goim?screenname=examplename and mailto:example@example.com, which start an AIM conversation with examplename and open a new email to example@example.com in your primary mail client, respectively. Non-website URLs are handed off to the appropriate application, so they will always work as long as you have the appropriate application installed.
Switches the SMTP server that Mail.app uses to send messages for certain accounts. Please note that this Action cannot be used to change the SMTP server used by other email clients like Sparrow. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Changes how often Mail.app checks for new mail on all accounts. Please note that this Action cannot be used to change how often other email clients like Sparrow check for new mail. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Launches iChat if desired, then sets your iChat status (Available, Away, or Offline) and the status message you choose. Please note that this Action cannot be used to launch or change the status of other instant messaging clients like Adium. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Launches the application or runs the script you choose when you set up the Action. This can be any application you choose, any compiled Applescript (compiled Applescripts are saved with a .scpt extension), or any shell script. Please note that if the selected shell script is not set executable, it will not run; be sure to run “chmod +x /location/of/script” in the Terminal first.
If you prefer, this Action can be configured to fire when you leave a Place rather than when you arrive.
Quits the selected application. If you prefer, this Action can be configured to fire when you leave a Place rather than when you arrive.
Launches iTunes (if necessary) and begins playing the selected playlist. Sidekick uses iTunes to see the available playlists, so iTunes will launch if not already open when you configure this Action.
Opens Terminal (if necessary) and runs the specified command. If you prefer, this Action can be configured to fire when you leave a Place rather than when you arrive.
Sidekick will not wait for the Terminal command to complete before moving on to the next Action; if you want Sidekick to wait before taking further Actions, you will need to add and manually configure the System Action “Pause Execution of Actions…” (see below).
Switches the default browser to be the application you select. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Sets the iTunes equalizer settings to a particular preset or manual setting. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
System Actions make system-wide changes or edit options usually available only through System Preferences.
Switches the OS X System Location. This Action will temporarily drop all network connections until the connections associated with this System Location can be established, so you may want to use “Pause Execution of Actions” to pause Sidekick for a few seconds before running any further Actions that depend on internet access (such as “Connect to Server…”). The changes made by this Action are NOT reverted when you leave the current place
This Action is especially useful in conjunction with certain Applescripts that were created for use with Network Location, including the VPN Connect script previously available on the Network Location website.
Sets the system volume. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Turns Airport on or off (which can be useful for conserving power when you don’t have wireless internet access). The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place, but please note that with Airport turned off, Sidekick may not be able to accurately determine your location; depending on which criteria you use to identify your Places, you may need to turn Airport back on manually.
Sets the display brightness on all connected displays that support software brightness controls (which can be useful for conserving power while your laptop is not plugged into an external power source). The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Mounts a file server using the Finder. Make sure your server is properly specified (for example, afp://fileserver.domain.com) and spelled correctly, or this Action may fail silently. Passwords are usually stored in Keychain, so you should not need to enter your username and password every time this Action runs. Check “Unmount before sleeping” to make sure that file servers mounted using this Action are cleanly unmounted when you put your computer to sleep.
This Action automatically unmounts the file server if still connected when you leave the current Place.
Switches OS X’s default printer. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place. Please note that this Action will fail silently if the default printer in System Preferences is set to “Last Printer Used”.
Changes how long your computer will wait before starting the screensaver and allows you to specify whether your computer will require a password when waking from screensaver. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Locks the OS X keychain, which is useful when security is a concern. This Action will prompt you for the password to unlock the keychain when you leave the current Place.
Turns Bluetooth on or off (which can be useful for conserving power when you don’t need to connect to any devices using Bluetooth). The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Switches the desktop wallpaper on computer’s main display to the selected image. You can choose from the standard OS X wallpapers or specify your own. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Please note that due to differences in the way Spaces works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, this Action will change the wallpaper for only the currently open Space. We are looking into this issue.
Pauses the execution of further Actions for the specified number of seconds or until the specified host is available. This Action is especially useful in conjunction with Actions like “Connect to Server…” that require a certain server to be available before they can take place.
Turns Spaces on or off. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Please note that due to differences in the way Spaces works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, this Action will have no effect on computers running Lion.
Begins the Time Machine backup process. If the correct Time Machine disk isn’t available when this Action runs, you will receive a message from Time Machine that it could not complete the backup. To prevent this, we recommend using this Action only with Places that require the correct Time Machine disk to be connected.
Sidekick cannot tell when you are planning to leave a given Place, so please remember to eject your Time Machine disk manually before physically disconnecting it.
Turns Time Machine on or off. While off, Time Machine will not attempt to make backups or notify you that your computer has not been backed up.
Please note that due to differences in the way Time Machine works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, this Action may fail silently. We are looking into this issue.
Switches OS X’s timezone to the selected timezone. You can search by timezone abbreviation or the name of a country or a major city within that timezone. The changes made by this Action are reverted when you leave the current Place.
Capture My Settings checks your current display brightness, volume, Bluetooth, and Airport settings and adds them to the current Place.
If you have a brilliant idea for an Action, we’d love to hear about it! Use this item to email it to us.
Sidekick’s Show Map option is an easy way to see the locations of all your Places at once. When clicked, Show Map… brings up a map window zoomed to show all the Places you’ve added to Sidekick. You can also click the All Places dropdown menu to select one Place to view, or enter an address or click the Current Location button to easily view a location on the map even if you haven’t added a Place there yet.
Please be aware that if you create a Place with pins in several places geographically distant from another, the Show Map… window may fail to zoom properly when opened, and you may instead see the central point between the pins you’ve dropped. In that case, the pins themselves may be outside the visible map area until you zoom out one or more times. For this reason, we recommend creating separate Places with the same Actions attached to each rather than trying to use the same Place by dropping lots of pins in different locations.
Plugins are addons that add support for additional Actions to Sidekick. Some plugins (including plugins for 1Password and Adium) are available from the Sidekick website, but others may be published by other Sidekick users and developers, so be sure to do a search if you’re looking for Sidekick Actions for your favourite app.
Sidekick plugins use the extension “.skplugin”. To install one that you’ve downloaded, just double-click it; Sidekick will copy it to its support folder. The new plugins will appear below Application and System in a third menu item called Plugin when you add a new Action.
If Sidekick doesn’t immediately show Actions from a newly-installed plugin, you may need to quit and relaunch Sidekick in order to access them. Please note that if you do not have an application installed on your computer, Sidekick will not show Actions for that Application—even if you have correctly installed that plugin.
Sidekick provides a thirty-day trial period. To register it once your trial has run out (or once you’ve decided you can’t live without it), click Sidekick’s icon in the menu bar and click Buy Now…. A purchasing page will open in your default web browser; enter the information requested and choose your preferred payment method, then click next. On the following page, enter your payment information and choose Complete Order. Your credit card or PayPal account will be billed and you will receive your license for Sidekick via email.
The email will include a URL. Click it, and it will open Sidekick (if it’s not already open ) and open the About/Registration window with the Name and License Key fields already filled in. Then just click the Unlock button.
If you prefer to register Sidekick manually (or for some reason clicking the URL in your registration email does nothing), click the Sidekick icon in the menu bar and click Register…. Then click the Register button on the About/Registration window that appears, and enter the name you used to register Sidekick and the license key you received in the registration email, and click the Unlock button.
To uninstall Sidekick, you’ll first need to make sure you’ve quit it—click the Sidekick icon in the menu bar and click Quit Sidekick. Then just open your Applications folder, find Sidekick, and drag it to the Trash on the right side of your Dock. If you decide to reinstall Sidekick later, all of your settings will still be there.