VLC Shortcut on desktop macbooks

EliasG
Contributor

I need to add this shortcut to 70 laptops. I would like to add it to everyones desktop.

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -f --video-on-top --no-osd http://10.5.1.12 VLC://quit

any ideas would be great.

Thanks

6 REPLIES 6

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Not really understanding. What exactly does the above line do? Open VLC and open a video? Can you elaborate on exactly what needs to be deployed to the Desktops? A URL or .webloc style link? An alias?

Not applicable

You might want to check out Platypus, which let's you bundle scripts into apps:

http://www.sveinbjorn.org/platypus

Platypus is a developer tool for the Mac OS X operating system. It creates native Mac OS X applications from interpreted scripts such as shell scripts or Perl, Ruby and Python programs. This is done by wrapping the script in an application bundle along with a native executable binary that runs the script.

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Never mind my last post. I see what its doing. I agree with @pete_c. Platypus is an awesome little app development platform that has a quick learning curve and can create some nice apps from scripts. I've used it to create almost fully functional mini applications by also bundling cocoaDialog inside it to use for GUI items.
In your case though, a simple double clickable app bundle that runs the above command is all you'd need, and then deploy that out.

Another way to do it without using Platypus would be to create a .command file in a text editor or from Terminal and give it executable privileges. When double clicking the resulting file, it will open Terminal and run the script which in turn would open VLC and your video stream. Its a little uglier since it has to launch Terminal first, but it works.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@EliasG You could probably do this with applescript.

We use something like the following:

tell application "Safari" to open location "http://macmule.com/"

tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell

If that works with VLC, then you can save it as an app.. change the icon & update the info.plist to version it for deployment.

EliasG
Contributor

So I made an .app with Platypus but now the issue I am having is actually trying to push it out to everyones computers?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Use the FEU option.
1) Place the app on your own Desktop
2) Open Composer and drag the app in to create a new Source entry
3) Set any permissions as you may want on the app. (I'm not sure if this last step is necessary when using FEU, but perhaps?)
4) Wrap it up as a DMG
5) Add to Casper Admin, check the FEU option for the DMG, and deploy, making sure you use the FEU option in the policy.
It should drop the application onto everyone's Desktop.