Where to find it
Two places:
- Right-click any selected text or file and look near the bottom of the menu. There will be a submenu called Services.
- From any app's menu bar, open the app name menu (e.g. "Safari", "Mail") and find the Services entry there.
If you have never installed a Services-aware app, the menu will be mostly empty or only show macOS's built-in entries like "New Note With Selection" or "Show in Finder". This is why most people assume Services does nothing.
What it actually does
Services is macOS's built-in way of letting any app speak to any other app. When you install an app that registers Services, the actions show up in this menu everywhere, system-wide.
A few examples of what a Service might do when you click it:
- Take the email address you selected and start a new draft to it in Mail.
- Take the URL you selected and turn it into a QR code in an image viewer.
- Take the JSON blob you copied from a browser dev tool and pretty-print it inline.
- Take the photo you have selected in Finder and run an upscaler or cartoonizer on it.
- Take the address you selected and open it in Maps.
The clever part is that the source app does not need to know anything about the destination app. You can write a Service in Shortcuts, an Automator workflow, or a real app, and it just appears in everyone's menu.
Assigning a keyboard shortcut
Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services. You will see a long list of every Service every app on your machine has registered, organised by category (Files, Internet, Messaging, Text, and so on).
Each Service has a checkbox (enable/disable it) and a shortcut field. Click the shortcut area and press a key combination, and now you can fire that Service from anywhere on your Mac. This is the trick that turns Services from "buried submenu" into "second clipboard".
A short history
Services has been in macOS since the very first version. It was inherited from NeXTSTEP in the late 1980s, which is also where the Cocoa framework, plist files, and most of what makes a Mac feel like a Mac came from. The original idea was that apps should be small and composable, and Services was the wire that connected them.
The idea aged well. Long before "shortcuts" or "intents" were a thing on phones, Macs were quietly doing the same thing through Services.
TextLab: Format, Edit & Convert
A fast text toolbox on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The Mac version registers Services for JSON, regex, case conversion, and more. · iPhone, iPad & Mac