So, recently I wrote about my lovely new mobile. One thing about it that’s not so lovelœy is the lack of support in Salling Clicker for third generation Series 60 phones.

I became very used to just being able to walk away from my Mac and having several things automatically happen, including the screensaver starting (so no-one can monkey with my computer), iTunes pausing and Adium setting an “away” status. Now, not so much.

So, I wrote myself a little bit of AppleScript magic, and using Quicksilver bound it as a trigger to Command-Escape. Now things happen nearly automatically—I just have to remember to bosh that key combination as I walk away.

The only problem I have with it currently is detecting when I’ve really returned. I’m just testing for the screen saver going away, but that also happens if someone presses a key or moves the mouse. I don’t yet know how to detect that I really have unlocked the computer. But it’s a good start.

If you’d like to use it, either grab the compiled version, or copy and paste the code below into script editor and save it somewhere useful on your machine.

-- no point doing anything if the screensaver is already running
tell application "System Events"
    set screen_saver to (exists process "ScreenSaverEngine")
end tell
if screen_saver then
    return
end if

-- first off, start the screensaver 
-- (everything else can happen after this, so we can be confident of starting 
-- the script and just walking away)
tell application "SEC Helper"
    start screensaver
end tell

-- capture the current state of the computer, for restoration later
set screen_saver to true
tell application "Adium"
    set status_message to (my status message)
    set status_type to (my status type)
end tell

-- capture the current state of iTunes
set itunes_playing to false
tell application "SEC Helper"
    set itunes_running to check application availability "iTunes"
end tell
if itunes_running then
    tell application "iTunes"
        if player state is playing then
            set itunes_playing to true
            pause
        end if
    end tell
end if

-- set the "away" status in Adium, but only if you are signed in and available
tell application "Adium"
    if status_type is available then
        set my status type to away
        set my status message to "Not at my computer"
    end if
end tell

-- now loop, until the screensaver has finished (user has returned)
repeat while screen_saver
    delay 5
    tell application "System Events"
        set test_ss to (exists process "ScreenSaverEngine")
        if test_ss is false then
            set screen_saver to false
        end if
    end tell
end repeat

-- restore Adium's state
tell application "Adium"
    set my status type to status_type
    try
        set my status message to (status_message)
    on error
        set my status message to ""
    end try
end tell

-- restore iTunes if it was paused
if itunes_playing then
    tell application "iTunes"
        play
    end tell
end if