Yes, admittedly, I am wrong.
Of course, after I posted this GUI script example, I ran it on the macrumors site and it only captures the first article on that site, not the entire landing page. So, back to the drawing board, when I have time.
I try to never use long delays. I instead test for GUI items existing to control program flow like so…
use scripting additions
-- replace the 12-hour clock (%I) with 24-hour clock (%H) if needed.
set dt to (do shell script "date -j \"+%Y%m%dT%I%M%S\"")
set fileName to "Safari (" & dt & ")" & ".pdf"
log (fileName) as text
tell application "Safari" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Safari"
-- set frontmost to true -- not needed, the activate command above already does this
-- 1. Enter Reader Mode so we can have paginated PDF output
try
click menu item "Show Reader" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1
repeat until exists menu item "Hide Reader" of menu 1 of menu bar item "View" of menu bar 1
delay 0.5 -- Allow time to render
end repeat
end try
-- 2. Trigger "Export as PDF"
click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1
-- 3. Handle the Save dialog (adjust delay for speed)
repeat until exists sheet 1 of window 1
delay 0.5
end repeat
if (value of attribute "AXIdentifier" of sheet 1 of window 1) = "save-panel" then
set value of text field "Save As:" of sheet 1 of window 1 to fileName
delay 0.5
click button "Save" of sheet 1 of window 1
end if
end tell
end tell
I also try to avoid keystroke commands.
Robert. Thanks for the suggestion.
In my particular circumstance, the PDF cannot be paginated. The reason is that the content of the web page is financial data in a tabular format and splitting the PDF into pages is very undesirable. So, I simply disabled the reader portion of your script, but an error is returned. I assume that sheet 1 of window 1 is the issue, but that’s just a guess. BTW, I lengthened the delays to 1 second just for testing.
I’m on MacOS Sequoia. What OS are you on?
I’m on macOS Tahoe 26.5 Public Beta 3.
I’m not on Tahoe, but Apple probably changed the order of the gui elements
Copy the value to the clipboard.
Set the focus on the text field
Paste the clipboard
Press Return
Thanks Robert. I’ll spend some time learning UI Browser to see if I can get the correct GUI elements.
Hi @peavine
Try this script. It’s running fine here but I’m on Sequoia.
-- build the name of the pdf file
set {{a, b, c}, {d, e, f}} to {words of short date string, words of time string} of (current date)
set theName to c & "-" & b & "-" & c & " at " & d & "." & e & "." & f & ".pdf"
set thePath to ("" & (path to desktop) & theName)
tell application "Safari" to activate
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
-- click menu item to open the 'save as pdf' panel
set aMenu to a reference to (menu item 1 of menu 1 of menu bar item 3 of menu bar 1 whose name contains "export") -- chage "export" to suite your language
if not (exists aMenu) then return "can't find export menu"
click aMenu
-- wait for sheet to open, returning error if it takes more than 2 seconds
repeat with i from 1 to 20
if exists sheet 1 of window 1 then exit repeat
delay 0.1
end repeat
if i = 20 then return "save as panel can't open"
-- in this sequence, you may need to add delays
set value of text field 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 to theName -- the 'save as' text field is always the first
click pop up button 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 -- there is only 1 popup button
click menu item 1 of menu 1 of pop up button 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 -- the first is the desktop
click button -1 of sheet 1 of window 1 -- the 'ok' button is always the last
end tell
delay 1 -- wait for the file to be available
tell application id "com.apple.Preview"
activate
open thePath
end tell
Be aware that with the AP site, I got 2 issues:
1- needed to scroll down the page at first to get all images in the pdf.
2- the pdf shows nothing in Acrobat DC but is perfect in Preview.
Thanks Jonas for the suggestion.
I received the following error, and I assume that’s because sheet 1 of window 1 doesn’t work on my Tahoe computer. My test site was macscripter.net.
System Events got an error: Can’t get text field 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 of process “Safari”. Invalid index.
I also received the following error, but that was because of the value returned on my computer for short date string. This was easily fixed.
error “Can’t get item 2 of {"2026.05.05"}.” number -1728 from item 2 of {“2026.05.05”}
Note sure. If it was the case, the script result should be “save as panel can’t open” (unless you’ve change it!).
Same thing if it can’t find the Export menu.
Does the ‘Save As’ panel opens or not at all?
In Tahoe the UI of the sheet is wrapped in a splitter group, see my first post.
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Jonas. The only changes I made were to fix the date issue and to delay 1 second while Safari activated. This is the result:
Thanks Stefan. I missed that completely. 
I will test this later today and report back.
I spent over an hour attempting to get my script to work reliably with the suggested solutions, but none worked reliably. So, I’m going to give up on this one. My original script is a bit slow and kludgey, but it does work reliably, and I’ll continue using that.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions–I greatly appreciate your help.
-1728 error is usually permissions error
@peavine, are you interested in a wkhtmltopdf based solution? It’s a command line tool to render HTML into PDF. You could either have Safari save the html or just pull it with curl. Quick here on slow intel hardware.
--https://blog.harawata.net/2011/06/convert-html-files-to-pdf-using-web-kit.html?m=1
on run
set htmls to choose file with prompt "PDFに変換するHTMLファイルを指定してください。" of type {"public.html"} with multiple selections allowed
my convertHtmlToPdfList(htmls)
end run
on open htmls
my convertHtmlToPdfList(htmls)
end open
on convertHtmlToPdfList(htmls)
tell application "Finder"
set cmd to POSIX path of (path to me) & "Contents/MacOS/wkhtmltopdf"
--The above line expects you to place the executable in the Contents/MacOS/ directory inside the application package.
--I would replace this with a posix path to the wkhtmltopdf binary.
--i.e. set cmd to "/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf"
repeat with html in htmls
if (name extension of html is "html") then
my convertHtmlToPdf(cmd, html)
end if
end repeat
end tell
end convertHtmlToPdfList
on convertHtmlToPdf(cmd, html)
tell application "Finder"
set htmlName to name of html
set {dir, htmlUrl, pdfName} to {POSIX path of (container of html as alias), URL of html, text 1 thru -5 of htmlName & "pdf"}
end tell
do shell script "\"" & cmd & "\" \"" & htmlUrl & "\" \"" & dir & pdfName & "\""
end convertHtmlToPdf
1 Like
Thanks Paul. I’ll take a look at that. Sounds promising.