Take a selfie on every wake-up from sleep (macOS)

Tags: macOS

Written on March 31, 2016

For some reason, I wanted to take a selfie whenever my Macbook Air wakes up from sleep.

Here are the steps I took for it:

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0. Install tools that are needed

imagesnap is a command line tool which takes a photo with the built-in camera of Macbook.

Install it with brew:

$ brew install imagesnap

Then install sleepwatcher:

$ brew install sleepwatcher

It will be used for monitoring sleep/awake states of the Macbook.

1. Create a shell script

Create a script that will save photos using imagesnap.

#!/bin/bash

IMAGESNAP_BIN="/usr/local/bin/imagesnap"
SAVE_PATH="/path/to/the/imagesnap_captures"	# XXX - edit this to yours

$IMAGESNAP_BIN "${SAVE_PATH}/captured_`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M`.jpg" > /dev/null 2>&1

This script will save captured images into the SAVE_PATH.

Saved images will be named like captured_20160331_2058.jpg.

Now it’s time to set sleepwatcher up, which will execute this script.

2. Setup sleepwatcher

Copy de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility-localuser.plist file into /Library/LaunchDaemons/:

$ sudo cp /usr/local/Cellar/sleepwatcher/2.2/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility-localuser.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher.plist

and edit it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher</string>
		<string>-w /path/to/script.sh</string>
	</array>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
	<key>KeepAlive</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

With -w option, /path/to/script.sh will be executed on wake. (if you need, use -s for sleep state)

You can see more options by running /usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher without any option.

Now load this file:

$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher.plist

then sleepwatcher starts to monitor the sleep/wake state of your machine.

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Now your selfie will be captured on every wake up!

Written on March 31, 2016