Look up an macOS application's bundle ID #

Paste this function in a command-line terminal, or store it in a file (e.g., in a directory in $PATH, for example: ~/bin/).

1function app2bundle {
2  osascript -e "id of application \"$1\"" 2>/dev/null || { \
3    echo "no results found for \"$1\"" 1>&2; \
4    return 1; \
5  };
6}

example usage #

A few examples for succesful lookups:

1app2bundle spotify
2# ➜ com.spotify.client

1app2bundle 'visual studio code'
2# ➜ com.microsoft.VSCode

1app2bundle 'vscodium'
2# ➜ com.visualstudio.code.oss

And a failure lookup:

1app2bundle fakeapp
2# ➜ no results found for "fakeapp"