10.6: Enable some bundled Services in the contextual menu

Feb 04, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: AronAmbrosiani

Snow Leopard only hintUnfortunately, a bug in Snow Leopard may mean you're not seeing all the Services you should see in the contextual menu that appears when you right-click on a document or a text selection. You can, however, make those Services appear in the contextual menu:

  1. Open the Keyboard System Preferences panel, and select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
  2. Select Services in left-hand column.
  3. Deselect and reselect the Services you wish to appear in the contextual menu.
After toggling, the selected Services now appear at the bottom of the contextual menu. Credit isn't mine -- I found the details of this bug in Rob Griffiths' write-up on Snow Leopard's Services.

[robg adds: I had totally forgotten I'd written about this bug, and it seems it's still present in 10.6.2 (as tested on a new install here). It's also a bit more complex than I originally stated -- there are some Services that, even though they'll show in the Services menu, won't show in the contextual menu even after the above trick. It's not clear what the logic is for what will or will not show up, so you'll need to experiment a bit.

To demonstrate the problem, select some text in TextEdit, and then Control-click on the selection. Any relevant Services should appear at the very bottom of the menu, including two Mail-related entries (New Note With Selection, New Email With Selection) and one for Stickies (Make New Sticky Note). If you don't see them, perform the above toggle trick, and they'll miraculously appear.]

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Mac OS X Hints
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