A Simple Productivity Hack Using Bash Scripts

*This article was inspired by laziness.

The problem

A part of my daily workflow is participating in forums. Every morning I read through Hacker News, 8base Community, several different subreddits, StackOverflow, and a few others for an hour. It's how I like to engage with developers.

There is something merely tedious about this morning routine. Remembering each community forum to visit is a slog. I end up always leaving a dozen or more tabs open in Chrome browser; my computer battery's lifespan reduces to that of a gnat.

For a hot-second, I became all excited about finding some tab manager. After that second, I decided that the last thing I wanted was another app/extension in my life. So, I asked myself…

"What's the most simple solution to track and open my forums every morning?"

Simple Bash Scripts Are The Solution

After some brain-storming – a light rain, at best – I decided that I'd try to employ a Bash script. 2-minutes later, everything worked; seriously, it was that simple. 

Here's what I did. Start by opening your terminal and running the following commands – or using equivalents.

{% code-block language="shell" %}
# Move to the Desktop directory
cd ~/Desktop

# Create a new bash script
touch launcher.sh

# Open the script in a text editor
code launcher.sh
{% code-block-end %}

With the bash script open, copy and paste the following code into the file.

{% code-block language="bash" %}
#!/bin/bash

# Keep a list of links.
links=(
  "https://community.8base.com/"
  "https://www.reddit.com/r/graphql/"
  "https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/"
  "https://news.ycombinator.com/"
  "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/firebase?tab=Newest"
  "https://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=graphql"
  "https://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=vue"
  "https://github.com/8base/Documentation/issues"
)

# Open links in the list.
for i in "${links[@]}"
do 
 open "$i" 
done

wait;
{% code-block-end %}

I'd be hard-pressed to find a more expressive script. However, lets quickly run through what's happening.

The `links` variable stores an array of URLs – at any time, add or remove URLs relevant to you. The `for` loop iterates over the `links` array and each URL is passed as an argument to the `open` command.

Save the script and hop back into your terminal. The `launcher.sh` file needs execution permissions. We can grant that using the following `chmod` command.

{% code-block language="shell" %}
chmod +x launcher.sh
{% code-block-end %}

Sweet! That's it. Double-click the `launcher.sh` file on your Desktop and all your tabs will appear.

The Decoration of Useful Bash Scripts

There is one glaring issue that must be mitigated. This script looks UhhhGLY on our home screen! Let's improve that.

I found this newspaper emoji icon on Google Images. Simply right-click it in the browser and select "Copy Image." Now, right-click the` launcher.sh` file and open the "Get Info" pane. In the top-left, select the file icon so that it highlights and press `[CMD] + V` to paste it.

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Rename the file to whatever you'd like; it's fine to remove the `.sh` file extension.

Enjoy Your Simple Bash Scripts, The End

The file should look like a native desktop app at this point! Double-click it, and all specified URLs will open in your default browser. If you need to update the URLs, simply open it in a text editor. What I've begun to do is duplicate these scripts for different workflows (i.e. `Forums Launcher`, `News Launcher`, `Debugging Launcher`).