{"id":1215,"date":"2025-06-17T13:50:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T11:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2025-06-17T14:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T12:08:11","slug":"quick-action-convert-to-m4a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"Quick action: convert to m4a"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you do not want to keep large WAV or AIFF files on your disk that eat up precious space, you can use Apple’s Automator<\/em> to write a quick action<\/em> to easily convert these files to m4a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open Apple’s Automator and create a new quick action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Automator: convert audio files to m4a<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
for f in "$@"\ndo\n  afconvert -f m4af -d aac "$f" "${f%.*}.m4a"\ndone\n<\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
You can also have Automator delete the original file <\/strong>after conversion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Automator: convert audio to m4a and delete original file<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
for f in "$@"\ndo\n  # Convert WAV to M4A\n  afconvert -f m4af -d aac "$f" "${f%.*}.m4a"\n  \n  # Check if conversion succeeded before deleting\n  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then\n    rm "$f"\n  else\n    echo "Conversion failed for $f, original not deleted."\n  fi\ndone<\/code><\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
These quick actions<\/em> also work on video files (like mp4), in case you are only interested in keeping the audio track of a video file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The above quick action workflows can be downloaded below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Convert to m4a.workflow<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Convert to m4a and delete source.workflow<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
To install the workflows as quick actions<\/em>, you can download the above files, unzip and execute. macOs will then install the workflows. Your macOS security protection still keeps them disabled. You have to enable them in system preferences. Open Login Items & Extensions<\/em>, under Extensions<\/em>, behind the Finder<\/em> line, hit the “i” button:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
macOS system settings: enable the quick action<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Source: These scripts have been developed with the help of a generative large language model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you do not want to keep large WAV or AIFF files on your disk that eat up precious space, you can use Apple’s Automator to write a quick action to easily convert these files to m4a. Open Apple’s Automator and create a new quick action. You can also have Automator delete the original file […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automator"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1232,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homeserver.lu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}