01-25-2010, 03:18 PM
This is actually quite simple using System Profiler. Run this command from Terminal:
system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType > ~/Desktop/Applications.txt
This will output every single application on your computer to a file on the Desktop called Applications.txt. To refine it to just the applications in your Applications folder, try something like this:
system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep "Location: /Applications" -B 7 > ~/Desktop/Applications.txt
It will output a generally nice list of applications. You could even refine that further to include other folders, such as ~/Applications. Also, you can change the path to output it wherever you like, including on your backup disk somewhere.
Throw that as a do shell script
in an AppleScript, set it to run on a schedule with iCal, and you'll be good to go. Here are instructions
that I gave in another thread on how to assign an application to a scheduled iCal event. Just replace making an Automator script with making an AppleScript (or even do make it in Automator with a Run Applescript action), and schedule it regularly for how often you want the file to be updated.