I often want to share screenshots in text chat from my computer, and I don't like sharing Dropbox links since they load a huge HTML+JS app just to show an image.
Since I already have a Micropub Media Endpoint that apps like Quill use to upload photos, I thought that would be a good place to also share screenshots from. The Media Endpoint is a simple HTTP API. It accepts a file upload, and returns the URL to the file in the Location header.
OSX has what's called "Folder Actions" where the system will trigger a script to run any time a file is added to a folder. I created an Automator script that will upload the newly added file to the media endpoint, and copy the resulting URL onto the clipboard.
![](https://aaronparecki.com/2016/11/02/5/image-1.png)
The curl command I used is below. Of course you'll want to change the values of the access token and endpoint URL for yourself:
curl -i -F "file=@$1" -H "Authorization: Bearer xxx" https://media.aaronpk.com/endpoint.php | grep Location: | sed -En 's/^Location: (.+)/\1/p' | tr -d '\r\n' | pbcopy
To activate the Folder Action, save this in:
~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/
Now, open Finder to the folder where your screenshots are saved, and right click the folder and navigate to "Folder Actions Setup".
![](https://aaronparecki.com/2016/11/02/5/image-2.png)
Attach the script to the folder in the window that appears. Your script should appear in the list once you've saved it to your "Folder Actions" folder in ~/Library.
![](https://aaronparecki.com/2016/11/02/5/image-3.png)
Now, whenever you take a screenshot (or drop any other file in that folder), the Automator workflow will run and will upload your image to your media endpoint! After a few seconds, you should see a popup notification that the URL to your file is on your clipboard.
![](https://aaronparecki.com/2016/11/02/5/image-4.png)