Mutate

Inline text replacement and generation utility for Mac (menu bar, via shortcut)

demo.mov

Requirements

macOS 14+, universal .app in .dmg archive, notarized

requires:

• accessibility permissions (to access selected text and to replace it, also accesses clipboard to bypass limitations of certain tools)
• outgoing network connection to support Monaco editor

Features

• native
• works in any window
• completely offline
• seamless text replacement or generation without interrupting your worklfow and without switching to a differnt window
• ability to define your own transformation and generation tools with Javascript (the app comes with a few default tools)
• register as startup item to be always available
• define your own shortcut
• import/export tools to yaml

Use cases

• Expanding abbreviations
• Conversions
• Encoding / decoding
• Sorting
• Templates
• Lorem ipsum generation
• and more

Installation

1. Download dmg archive (from releases on the right side of this page)
2. Mount the dmg and move .app file to /Applications folder
3. Run the app
4. The tool comes with a few pre-installed transformations and generators. You can import more from the transformations folder and generators folder or create your own. Contributions are welcome!

Update to a new version: simply grab the newest dmg from Releases and replace your existing .app file in /Applications folder. Your existing Transformations will be preserved.

Usage

1. trigger Mutate with the defined shortcut (default is Cmd + Shift + u)
2. popup will show Transformations or Generators depending on whether any text is selected or not
3. you can toggle between Tranformations and Generators with Ctrl + Tab
4. choose a tool from the list
5. press enter
6. selected text will be replaced with the output or text will be injected at the cursor position

Custom transformations

Custom transformation must contain function with the name transform and parameter text. The function is expected to return a transformed string.

Format JSON:

function transform(text) {
    try {
        // 1. Sanitize the string first
        var sanitizedText = text
            .replace(/[“”]/g, '"')  // Fix macOS curly double quotes
            .replace(/[‘’]/g, "'")  // Fix macOS curly single quotes
            .replace(/'/g, '"');    // Attempt to convert JS single quotes to JSON double quotes
            
        // 2. Parse and format
        var parsed = JSON.parse(sanitizedText);
        return JSON.stringify(parsed, null, 2);
    } catch(e) {
        return "Error formatting JSON: " + e.message;
    }
}

See more examples under transformations folder.

Custom generators

Custom generators must contain function with the name generate and no parameters. The function is expected tu return generated string.

function generate() {
    return "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.";
}

See more examples under generators folder.

Limitations

• Tools selector location - the tool tries to read selected text rectangle and change it's location accordingly, but some apps don't report this. In such case the tool falls back to mouse poiner location.
• Terminals - the transformed text will not overwrite selected text but will appear at the cusor position,
• Rich text - the tool currently doesn't preserve rich text formatting and will output plain text if rich text is provided as an input.

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