Last updated: 2026-08-21
Availability: the Start Capture and Stop Capture actions arrive in Laminar 1.7.1. The version on the Mac App Store today (1.7) does not include them, so on 1.7 the shortcut shows “Unknown Action” and cannot run. Check Laminar › About Laminar for your version, and update when 1.7.1 is offered. This page is here so the shortcut is ready the moment you are.
Laminar Interval Capture is a ready-made shortcut for the macOS Shortcuts app. It records a sequence of short SER clips with Laminar: N clips of L seconds, starting one every I minutes. 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 1.7.1 or later to run.
You do not need the download if you already have Laminar 1.7.1 or later: choose Help › Install Interval Capture Shortcut… in Laminar and the same file opens in Shortcuts.
Requires Laminar 1.7.1 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 three values. Edit them before each session:
| Value | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Clip length (seconds) | How long each SER clip records. | 15 |
| Interval (minutes) | Time from the start of one clip to the start of the next. | 1 |
| Number of clips | How many clips to record. Number × interval is the length of the whole session. | 120 |
The interval is measured start to start. With 15-second clips every 1 minute, a clip begins at 0:00, 1:00, 2:00, and so on, each ending 15 seconds after it starts. The interval is not a pause after each clip, so keep it longer than the clip length; otherwise every slot after the first is reported as “Already recording”.
Some worked examples:
| Goal | Clip | Interval | Clips | Session |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar time-lapse, one stack per minute for two hours | 15 s | 1 min | 120 | 2 h, 120 files |
| Jupiter, a clip every 2 minutes for an hour | 60 s | 2 min | 30 | 1 h, 30 files |
| Seeing survey, a short clip every 5 minutes all night | 10 s | 5 min | 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 a slot 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. Three skips in a row stop the shortcut, because by then something is wrong with the session rather than with one clip.
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 on its next slot.
- 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 started, the shortcut posts a “finished” notification. That last clip is still recording and ends on its own.
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 slot 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.
- 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 slot.
- 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 shortcut is nothing more than 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 Started is No: Show Notification with its Status
- Wait I × 60 seconds
- End Repeat
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, 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 1.7 or earlier cannot run this shortcut. On 1.7.1 or later, 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.
“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 slot says “Already recording”. The clip is longer than the interval. Make the interval longer than the clip length.
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