Last updated: 2026-08-28
Availability: the Start Capture and Stop Capture actions have shipped since Laminar 1.7.1. The shortcut on this page is the reworked version of 2026-08-26 and needs Laminar 1.7.2 or later; it is also bundled inside Laminar from 1.8.0. Check Laminar › About Laminar for your version. On 1.7 or earlier the shortcut shows “Unknown Action” and cannot run.
Laminar Interval Capture is a ready-made shortcut for the macOS Shortcuts app. It records a sequence of short SER clips with Laminar: a chosen number of clips, each of a chosen length, waiting a chosen gap after each one finishes before starting the next. Use it for a solar or lunar time-lapse over a morning, a seeing survey through the night, or a planet recorded on a fixed schedule and stacked afterwards.
It is built from two actions Laminar publishes to Shortcuts, Start Capture and Stop Capture, so you can also open it, change it, or build your own sequence from the same parts.
Download
The shortcut comes as a small zip file. Download it, unzip it, and double-click Laminar Interval Capture.shortcut to add it to the Shortcuts app. It needs Laminar 1.7.2 or later to run.
You do not need the download if you have Laminar 1.8.0 or later: choose Help › Install Interval Capture Shortcut… in Laminar and the same file opens in Shortcuts.
Already have a copy? Open it in Shortcuts and look at the Dictionary at the top. If its rows are Clip minutes, Clip seconds, Gap minutes, Gap seconds and Number of clips, it is current. If they are Clip length (seconds) and Interval (minutes), it is the earlier version: delete it and install this one. The earlier version could record fewer clips than asked for and does not work in any language but English.
Requires Laminar 1.7.2 or later and macOS 15 or later. The shortcut runs only on the Mac; it will sync to an iPhone through iCloud but cannot run there, because Laminar is a Mac app.
Install
- Unzip the download and double-click Laminar Interval Capture.shortcut, or use the Help menu item above. The Shortcuts app opens and shows the shortcut.
- Click Add Shortcut. It appears in your library as Laminar Interval Capture.
- The first time it runs, macOS asks once whether the shortcut may use Laminar's Start Capture action. Allow it.
Before a Session
The shortcut talks to the running copy of Laminar. Have this in place before you start it:
- Laminar is open with its main window showing.
- The camera is connected and the preview is running. Each clip uses the exposure, gain, capture size, and format you have set, exactly as the Start Capture button would.
- The capture folder is reachable (Laminar › Settings). If it has been moved or put in the Trash, the shortcut stops rather than recording somewhere else.
- The Mac stays awake. Laminar keeps the display awake while the preview runs, which covers the gaps between clips. Closing a laptop lid still sleeps the machine. Use mains power for a long session.
- Enough free disk space for the whole session, with headroom. See Disk space below for how to size it.
Set Up the Session
Open the shortcut in the Shortcuts app. The first action is a Dictionary with five values. Edit them before each session:
| Value | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Clip minutes | Whole minutes of each SER clip. | 0 |
| Clip seconds | Plus this many seconds. For a 90-second clip, set Clip minutes to 1 and Clip seconds to 30. | 15 |
| Gap minutes | Whole minutes to wait after a clip finishes. | 0 |
| Gap seconds | Plus this many seconds. | 45 |
| Number of clips | How many clips to record. | 120 |
Every value is a whole number. Put minutes in the minutes row and seconds in the seconds row, never a decimal. A zero clip length, a zero gap, or zero clips is refused before anything records, with a notification naming the fix. Negative or fractional values are not checked and will misbehave.
The gap is the wait after each clip finishes, so one clip starts every clip length + gap. The defaults record a 15-second clip every minute. Because the wait always includes the clip, any gap above zero leaves the previous clip time to finish writing; a short gap on a slow disk can still be skipped, and the notification says so.
Number of clips means clips, not attempts. A skipped attempt does not use one up: the shortcut allows three recoverable skips on top of the number you ask for, and stops if three in a row are skipped.
Some worked examples:
| Goal | Clip | Gap | Clips | Session |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar time-lapse, one stack per minute for two hours | 0 min 15 s | 0 min 45 s | 120 | 2 h, 120 files |
| Jupiter, a clip every 2 minutes for an hour | 1 min 0 s | 1 min 0 s | 30 | 1 h, 30 files |
| Seeing survey, a short clip every 5 minutes all night | 0 min 10 s | 4 min 50 s | 96 | 8 h, 96 files |
To record by frame count instead of seconds, set Laminar's Capture Session limit to Frames and clear the duration in the shortcut's Start Capture action; the clip then uses the Inspector's limit.
Run It
Run the shortcut from the Shortcuts app, the Shortcuts menu bar item, or Spotlight. The first clip starts immediately. Laminar's window shows each clip as it records, and its Capture Session limit switches to the clip length you chose, the same as if you had typed it in.
Every clip is a normal SER file named Target_yyyy-MM-dd-HHmmss.ser (UTC), so a session sorts into capture order in the Finder and in stacking software such as AutoStakkert, PIPP, or Strata.
Skipped clips
If an attempt is skipped (the previous clip was still running, or its file was still being written to a slow disk), the shortcut posts a notification naming the reason and carries on; the skip does not count against your number of clips. Three skips in a row stop the shortcut, because by then something is wrong with the session rather than with one clip. If skips keep happening, the gap is too short for the clip to finish writing: increase it.
Stopping
- To end a session early, stop the shortcut: click the stop button in the Shortcuts window, or in the Shortcuts menu bar item.
- Pressing Stop Capture in Laminar (or running the Stop Capture action) only ends the clip in progress; the shortcut starts another after the gap.
- A hard problem (camera unplugged, preview stopped, capture folder missing, disk below Laminar's 2 GB minimum) stops the shortcut with Laminar's message. Clips already finished are intact; a clip that was recording when the camera or disk failed is kept as a partial file.
- When the last clip has finished, the shortcut posts a “finished” notification with the number of clips recorded. If it ran out of attempts first, it says how many clips remained.
Disk space
Size the whole session before you start; neither Laminar nor the shortcut checks it in advance, and the figures below only hold for the exposure, capture size, and format you will record with, so set those first and let the preview run for a few seconds.
- In Laminar's Inspector, set the Capture Session limit to Secs with the shortcut's clip length. The card's Storage required figure is now the size of one clip, including the SER file overhead.
- Multiply by the number of clips.
- Add headroom: Laminar itself keeps a 5 GB margin and will not start a clip when free space is below 2 GB, and the frame rate drifts a little with exposure and temperature. Allow at least 10% on top of the total, plus that 5 GB.
As a cross-check, the card's capture rate (for example 30 MB/s) times the clip length in seconds times the number of clips gives the same total: at 30 MB/s, 120 clips of 15 s is about 54 GB before headroom, so plan on 65 GB free.
Two safeguards apply per clip, not per session: Laminar refuses to start a clip when free space is below its 2 GB minimum, and if the disk fills while a clip is recording, that clip ends early with its partial file kept. The next attempt then stops the shortcut.
Good to Know
- Cadence. Shortcuts' Wait action is accurate to roughly a tenth of a second per step; over a 64-clip test the session ran about 7 seconds long. Clip lengths are exact, and each file's timestamps record its true start time.
- Languages. The shortcut branches on the Start Capture result's Status Code, not on the sentence a person reads, so it behaves the same with Laminar in German, French, Italian, Spanish or Dutch.
- Pointing. Laminar does not move the mount or re-centre the target between clips. Your mount's tracking has to hold the target for the whole session.
- Sleep. Choosing Sleep from the Apple menu, or closing a laptop lid, ends the preview, and the shortcut fails at its next attempt.
- Focus. The actions run in the background. Laminar does not take focus when a clip starts, so you can work in other apps.
Build Your Own
The heart of the shortcut is a loop you can copy and change in the Shortcuts app:
- Repeat N times
- Start Capture in Laminar, duration L seconds
- If Capture Result's Status Code is not
recording: Show Notification with its Status - Wait L + gap seconds
- End Repeat
The bundled shortcut adds the whole-number checks, counts only clips that actually started, and allows three recoverable skips; those are the parts worth copying if you build your own. Start Capture takes an optional duration in seconds, returns as soon as recording has begun, and hands back a Capture Result with Started (Yes/No), Status, Status Code, File Name, and Duration. Stop Capture ends the clip in progress and waits for the file to finish. Both also answer to Spotlight and Siri (“Start capture in Laminar”, “Stop capture in Laminar”), to shortcuts run in Terminal, and to AppleScript through Shortcuts Events. The full reference, with every status and error message, is in Laminar's built-in Help under Shortcuts & Automation.
Troubleshooting
The Laminar actions are missing from Shortcuts, or the shortcut shows “Unknown Action”. First check the version: the actions exist from Laminar 1.7.1, and this shortcut needs 1.7.2. Open Laminar once after installing or updating it so macOS registers its actions, then reopen Shortcuts. Restart the Mac if they still do not appear. Keep a single copy of Laminar on the disk; a second copy can confuse the registration.
“Laminar Interval Capture did not start: … is zero.” One of the five values is zero. Clip minutes and Clip seconds cannot both be zero, nor can Gap minutes and Gap seconds, and Number of clips must be at least 1. Fix the value and run again.
“Please choose a value for each parameter in this action.” An action has lost a value, usually after editing. Open the shortcut and fill in the highlighted field, or reinstall it.
Every attempt is skipped, or the session records fewer clips than asked. Check the Dictionary rows: if they read Clip length (seconds) and Interval (minutes), you have the earlier version, which measured its interval start to start and could not guarantee the previous clip had finished. Delete it and install the current one. With the current version, a skip means the gap is too short for that disk: increase Gap seconds.
Laminar's capture limit changed. That is the duration the shortcut asked for; Laminar treats it as you setting the limit. Change it back in the Inspector after the session if you like.
What did clip 37 do? Laminar's diagnostic log records every action: lines beginning with [Intent] say whether each Start Capture started, was skipped (and why), or failed. Open the log folder from Laminar › Settings › Diagnostics.
Need Help?
For everything else, see the Laminar Support page.
Email: support@macobservatory.com