Every so often, source code for an application gets lost, mislaid or not given to a customer. In that case, the application’s user may need to do a lot of work to decompile the application and see if the source code can be recovered from the application itself.
I recently had a colleague ask about a similar situation with an Automator application, where they had the Automator application itself but didn’t have access to the Automator workflow that created it.
After some testing, here’s how we were able to access the workflow using only the compiled application.
1. Save a copy of the Automator application to a convenient location.
2. Right-click on the application and select Show Package Contents.
3. Save a copy of Contents/document.wflow to a convenient location.
4. Rename document.wflow to preferred_file_name_here.workflow.
5. When prompted, confirm that you want to change the extension from .wkflow to .workflow.
At this point, you should be able to open the newly-renamed .workflow document in Automator and examine the workflow.
Update 8-1-2015: Steve Hayman pointed out that there’s an even easier way. For details, see below the jump.
Anthony Reimer concurred:
