Recently I downloaded Balatro on my Macbook Pro and I wanted to play mods on it, but to play mods on it I had to run a shell script. I didn’t want to navigate to the directory on my terminal and run the script every time I wanted to play, so I decided to turn the command that I had to run into an Apple app. This is how I did it.

Step 1: Create the Shell Script

In this step I created a shell script that navigates to the directory where the Balatro mods are located and runs the script to launch the mods. Let’s name the file play_modded_balatro.sh. Here is an example of what the script might look like:

play_modded_balatro.sh

#!/bin/bash
cd "path/to/your/balatro/mods"
./balatro_mod_script.sh

Step 2: Make the Script Executable

After creating the shell script, you need to make it executable. Open your terminal and run the following command:

chmod +x play_modded_balatro.sh

Congratulations! You have now created a shell script that can be executed from the terminal. Now let’s turn it into an app.

Before we can turn the shell script into an app, we need to create a directory structure that macOS expects for applications.

Here is what the structure of the app will look like:

App_Name.app/
├── Contents/
│   ├── Info.plist
│   ├── MacOS/
│   │   └── play_modded_balatro.sh

App_Name.app is the name of your application, this is the root directory of the application bundle which will contains the necessary files for macOS to recognize it as an application.

Info.plist is a property list file that contains metadata about the application, such as its name, version, and executable path.

Step 3: Create the Directory Structure

Open your terminal and navigate to the Applications directory. Then run the following commands to create the necessary directories:

cd ~
cd ../../Applications # Navigate to the Applications directory
mkdir -p App_Name.app/Contents/MacOS # Creates the directory structure for the app
touch App_Name.app/Contents/Info.plist # Creates the Info.plist file
cp <path_to_your_shell_script> App_Name.app/Contents/MacOS/ # Copies the shell script to the MacOS directory

[!NOTE] You want to place the app in the Applications directory so that it can be easily accessed and launched like any other application on your Mac.

Step 4: Edit the Info.plist File

Now you need to edit the Info.plist file to provide the necessary metadata for your application. Open the Info.plist file in a text editor and add the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>CFBundleName</key>
    <string>App_Name</string>
    <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
    <string>com.example.App_Name</string>
    <key>CFBundleVersion</key>
    <string>1.0</string>
    <key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
    <string>1.0</string>
    <key>LSArchitecturePriority</key>
    <string>arm64</string>
</dict>
</plist>

[!NOTE] Replace LSArchitecturePriority is set to arm64 since my the mod for Balatro needs to run on the Apple Silicon architecture (not with Rosetta 2). You can read more about the Info.plist file here.

Step 5: Run the Application

Now that you have created the app structure and edited the Info.plist file, you can run your application. Open Finder, navigate to the Applications directory, and double-click on App_Name.app.

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