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.
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
Thanks Paul. I’ll take a look at that. Sounds promising.
This caught my attention, but as I don’t use Safari (I use Firefox) I tried converting your script to Firefox (posted below).
--set filename
set {year:y, month:m, day:d, hours:h, minutes:min, seconds:s} to (current date)
set theDate to ((y * 10000) + ((m as integer) * 100) + d) as text
set theTime to text 2 thru -1 of ((1000000 + (h * 10000) + (min * 100) + s) as text)
set fileName to "Furefox (" & theDate & " " & theTime & ")"
--confirm Safari is open with URL
tell application "Firefox" to set theURL to URL of front document
if theURL is missing value then display dialog "The frontmost Firefox window could not be found or did not return a URL." buttons {"OK"} cancel button 1 default button 1
--I normally run this script by way of FastScripts with Safari active
--as a result, the following is normally not necessary and is for testing only
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Firefox"
set frontmost to true
delay 1
end tell
--confirm "Export as "PDF dialog is available then display
set repeatNumber to 6
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Firefox"
repeat with i from 1 to repeatNumber
set menuAvailable to enabled of menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
if menuAvailable is true then
exit repeat
else if i = repeatNumber then
display dialog "The \"Export as PDF\" menu item was not available." buttons {"OK"} cancel button 1 default button 1
else
delay 0.5
end if
end repeat
click menu item "Export as PDF…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
delay 1 --a smaller number doesn't work for me
keystroke fileName
delay 0.5
end tell
But it returns an error “Firefox got an error: Can’t get URL of document 1.” Any suggestions?
Homer712. I don’t have Firefox installed on my computer, but I’ll provide what information I can.
According to Google AI, Firefox does not support AppleScript. So, the following line of the script will fail.
tell application "Firefox" to set theURL to URL of front document
It could be replaced with something else or skipped entirely if Firefox is open when the script is run. You might try the following followed by a delay.
tell application "Firefox" to activate
The rest of the script uses GUI scripting and may or may not work depending on menu items available in Firefox. Unfortunately, I don’t have any way to help with this.
I tried almost all of your suggestions and none of them worked, but then I have FireShot installed in Firefox, which captures an entire page and creates a PDF document.
Sorry for the fire drill.