It’s been bothering me for quite a while ever since I used OmniFocus on my iPhone more that I can’t easily activate Internet Sharing to sychronise OmniFocus on my Mac and iPhone. Here’s what I always had to do:

  1. Move the mouse (or use Spotlight/QuickSilver) to bring up the System Preferences.
  2. Press Sharing.
  3. Press Internet Sharing.
  4. Check Internet Sharing.
  5. Press Turn AirPort On.
  6. Click Start.

That’s at least 6 steps too many, and the friction makes me reluctant to synchronise my apps.[1]

I researched a bit and found a piece of AppleScript that can be used to enable Internet Sharing. I updated it to work for Snow Leopard, created a OS X Service for it using Automator. I also modified the script so that running it again turns Internet Sharing and AirPort off.

2 clicks. Tada!

http://gist.github.com/250267

[1] I don’t want to keep Internet Sharing on all the time because, there’s a OS X bug that makes the CPU hit 100% and I’ll have to disconnect by pulling out my HSDPA modem, put it back, wait a while and then connect again.