AppleScript without showing what program it opened and edited

Question

I wrote an AppleScript that goes into System Preferences and clicks on some of the buttons. I does that by literally opening System Preferences and clicking UI Elements. I'm wondering, is it possible to not show what programs AppleScript opened and what it clicked and only show the result, (in my case it changes screen resolution)? That would result in faster script execution.

I'm not totally sure I understand what you're asking however you cannot implement UI scripting without the UI elements being visible. — user3439894, May 04 '16 at 11:40
If this is about a faster way to change screen resolution, then you might want to use a command like utility. A while back I posted an answer to How can I set the display settings using command line and it also has a second answer too. I'd go for the second answer and use screenresolution. You can wrap the command in a do shell script statement if you want it in AppleScript. — user3439894, May 04 '16 at 11:56

calum_b · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-04T12:04:50.057

Not directly. You would have to figure out what underlying preferences the UI is changing, and whether there was a way to edit them directly using AppleScript or terminal commands (such as defaults write -- see man defaults for details.)

Unfortunately there is no canonical list of preferences that can be edited in this way, although you can find some here. There is also a website dedicated to hidden preference tweaks for OS X and Mac applications: defaults-write.com.

However, for your particular case, I'm pretty sure there is no built-in way to change resolutions from the command line. There is a screenresolution command that somebody wrote a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to work well with retina resolutions.

AppleScript without showing what program it opened and edited

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