How to Use Quick Actions on Mac to Save Time

You right-click a PDF on your desktop. Instead of opening it in Preview, finding the markup tool, and rotating page by page, you select one menu item: Rotate Left. Done in a second.

That’s a Quick Action. macOS has a handful built in, but most people never realize you can create your own — turning any repetitive task into a one-click shortcut available right from the Finder.

What are Quick Actions?

Quick Actions are small workflows that appear in three places on your Mac:

• The Finder preview pane — select a file and look at the right-hand panel
• The right-click context menu — right-click any file and check the Quick Actions submenu
• The Touch Bar — on supported MacBook Pro models

They’re designed for tasks you do repeatedly: rotating images, converting file formats, marking up PDFs, trimming videos. The idea is that you shouldn’t need to open a full app for a 2-second operation.

Built-in Quick Actions

macOS ships with several Quick Actions out of the box. The exact list depends on the file type you’ve selected:

For images: Rotate Left, Markup, Create PDF, Remove Background (macOS 13+)

For PDFs: Markup, Create PDF (merge multiple files)

For videos: Trim

For all files: Markup is available for most visual file types

These cover the basics, but the real power comes when you build your own.

Create Quick Actions with Automator

Automator has been part of macOS for years, and while Apple has shifted focus to Shortcuts, Automator still works and is useful for certain workflows.

Common Automator Quick Actions worth building:

• Resize images to a specific width for web uploads
• Convert HEIC to JPEG — drag in the “Change Type of Images” action
• Rename files with a timestamp prefix
• Move files to a specific folder based on type

Create Quick Actions with Shortcuts

The Shortcuts app (macOS 13 Ventura and later) is the modern way to build Quick Actions. It has a cleaner interface, more actions, and better integration with the rest of macOS.

Shortcuts also lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to any Quick Action. Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services, find your shortcut, and assign a key combination.

Clipboard-related Quick Actions

This is where Quick Actions get interesting for anyone who works with text all day. You can build Shortcuts that interact with your clipboard:

Strip formatting from clipboard text. Create a shortcut that grabs clipboard contents, converts to plain text, and puts the result back on the clipboard. Assign it a keyboard shortcut like ⌘⇧⌥V.

Save clipboard to a text file. Useful for logging things you copy throughout the day — like a lightweight clipboard journal.

Transform text on the clipboard. Change case, find and replace patterns, extract URLs or email addresses from a block of copied text.

Chain copy-paste operations. Copy from one app, transform, and paste into another — all triggered by a single shortcut.

These clipboard shortcuts work well on their own for one-off transformations. But they don’t solve the fundamental problem: once you copy something new, the old item is gone. For that, you need a clipboard manager running in the background.

Managing your Quick Actions

Over time, your Quick Actions list can get crowded. To control which ones appear:

1. Open System Settings
2. Go to Privacy & Security → Extensions → Finder
3. Uncheck any Quick Actions you don’t want cluttering the menu

You can also reorder them by dragging — put your most-used actions at the top.

Quick Actions won’t replace a full automation setup, but they’re one of the best examples of macOS doing something quietly useful. A few well-chosen Quick Actions can save you minutes every day — and unlike complex automation tools, they’re simple enough to set up during a coffee break.