Desktop Liberation aims to help you use cloud based APIS and services without being constrained by your desktop software. There's a particular emphasis on Google Workspace and Cloud APIs and JavaScript, but there's also plenty of Microsoft and other stuff here too. All code here is unprotected and free to re-use

To support my site, and if you find the material useful, you can buy my Google Apps Script and VBA titles published by O'Reilly media and Manning publications.

Most Recent Articles

trying to coral all the indices

Inside the volatile world of a Google Document

Explore the complexities of Google Docs' internal structure and how Google Apps Script handles document manipulation. The challenges of managing dynamic content through indices and statefulness, comparing DocumentApp with the Docs API. Learn about stateless vs. stateful systems, and the disconnect between API and DocumentApp. How to use named ranges to maintain element identity and how this helped to enable emulating the Apps Script environment on Node ...
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Turning async into synch on Node using workers

Turning async into synch on Node using workers

Emulating a synchronous service on node can be tricky. This example, emulating Apps Script services on Node, shows how you can use Node workers to pipeline async-sync methods ...
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another gas-fakes structure - enums

All about Apps Script Enums and how to fake them

For my gas-fakes side project (A proof of concept implementation of Apps Script Environment on Node) i needed to reverse engineer Apps Script services so you can write synchronous code on Node to call them exactly as you would in the Apps Script IDE. One of the fundamental structures is ...
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pushing the code up the hill

Apps Script Services on Node – using apps script libraries

I started working on faking Apps Script Services (gas-fakes) on Node as a background project a little while ago. Now it's 9 partially implemented services and (Total passes 1614 (100.0%)) individual platform comparison tests later. I figured it was time to see if I could port an Apps Script library ...
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annual gassypedia growth

Gassypedia – a look at a year of Apps Script growth

Time for the first annual update on the shared bigquery dataset all about the Apps Script ecosystem on Github, with reports available on looker. For details of how it all works see Gassypedia – public Google Apps Script on Github. Because the report is on looker and publicly available, it’s easy to filter and ...
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apps script fake services on node

Apps Script environment on Node – more services

This is version 1.0.2 of A proof of concept implementation of Apps Script Environment on Node with to which I've added more Apps Script services, notably the Cache and Property services. Getting started Remains more or less the same as before - see A proof of concept implementation of Apps ...
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errors unit testing

Unit test runner for both Node and Apps Script

I've added some new features to my Node/Apps Script, not least to fully document the API, but also to include the capability of reproducing the tested code in the summary results. I'm pretty pleased with the result, so I'm sharing some highlights here ...
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code locator

Report current running Node and Apps Script code

Find currently (or further up the call stack) executing code, and retrieve and report on that code at line. Works on both Node and Google Apps Script ...
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fake google apps script services

A proof of concept implementation of Apps Script Environment on Node

I use clasp/vscode to develop Google Apps Script (GAS) applications, but when using GAS native services, there's way too much back and fowards to the GAS IDE going on while testing. I set myself the ambition of implementing fake version of the GAS runtime environment on Node so I could ...
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use the same test runner scripts on both node and Apps Script

Apps Script test runner library ported to Node

Normally I write about porting from Node to Apps Script, but today, we're going in the opposite direction. If you use my Simple but powerful Apps Script Unit Test library you may have noticed a few recent articles on updates to that to make it look a little more like ...
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unit tester updat

Apps Script Unit tester now with ava style option

A few years I created a test runner for Apps Script and I've been using that ever since. However I've been using the rather wonderful ava for testing on Node for a while now. I figured it was about time to revise my GAS unit tester so I could minimize ...
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waiting for tests to be resolved simultaneosly minimal sketchy cool tones

Apps Script Unit tester now supports promises

Apps Script supports Promises and await/async syntax. This is handy, because it makes it more feasible to share code with Node with minimal fiddling. It does not support generators but there is a workaround. See Paging large data sets and how to make Apps Script understand generators for more detail ...
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gassypedia jan 2025

Gassypedia – January 2025 update

Time for the first, more or less quarterly, update on the shared bigquery dataset all about the Apps Script ecosystem on Github, with reports available on looker. For details of how it all works see Gassypedia – public Google Apps Script on Github. Note that this article is based only ...
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emits , listens waits for and handles cool tones illustration

An event emitter for Apps Script

If you use Node or do any front end development you're probably already familiar with the idea of event emitters. You've assigned listeners handlers for interesting events that occur within your app. You most usually asociate event emitters with asynchronous events. For example, when a user clicks a mouse, an ...
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managing gemini files

Manage Gemini uploads, schemas and prompts

I have thousands of pdf documents to analyze using Gemini - they are currently on Cloud storage. I've been playing around with prompts to get the structured output I'm looking for and I quickly found needed a way to easily upload and manage them to Gemini, and repeatedly fiddle around ...
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My YouTube Channel

My Publications

  • Going GAS Video

    Going GAS Video

    An accelerated video course over about 8 hours and 70 lessons taking you through JavaScript and Apps Script from start to finish. [...]
  • Going GAS Book

    Going GAS Book

    For those who prefer book and eBook formats, a 450+ page deep dive into Apps Script. Especially useful for those transitioning from another platform. [...]
  • Live Project

    Live Project

    Create, Implement and test a AI Powered Google Workspace Add-Ons. add functionality from a collection of Google Cloud APIs such as Cloud Storage, CardService, Drive and others [...]

Google developers expert program

The Google Developers Experts (GDE) Program is a community of outstanding professionals, developers, and thought leaders. Experts share their expertise and passion with other developers and tech communities.

My GDE profile - member since 2014

Support my research and site

Discover More Content

The most geeky things

  • Promises in VBA

    Using promises in JavaScript and other languages is the preferred way to orchestrate the completion of asynchronous activities. Here’s a (not perfect but fun) Promise implementation in VBA. Example includes getting data from Google Fusion [...]

  • React, Redux, Redis, Material-UI and Firebase

    A whole bunch of front end platform libraries that go together really well, but that are hard to grasp and get started with. Here’s a bunch of snippets to help show how all these things [...]

  • Color Fiesta

    The mathematics of color is a complex and interesting topic. Here you’ll find Google Apps Script, VBA and javascript examples of color manipulation including finding the closest match to a given color in a defined [...]

  • Automatic documentation

    Automating document ,creating Google Visualization and static tables of VBA projects, serialize instances of VBA classes and generating Google Apps Script skeleton of VBA projects. […] Share with your network
Book : Going Gas
Going Gas book

Whether you’re moving from Microsoft Office to Google Docs or simply want to learn how to automate Docs with Google Apps Script, this practical guide shows you by example how to work with each of the major Apps Script services. The book introduces JavaScript basics for experienced developers unfamiliar with the language, and demonstrates ways to build real-world apps using all of the Apps Script services previously covered.

Video: Apps Script for developers

In this Google Apps Script for Developers training course, expert author Bruce Mcpherson will teach you how to customize, enhance, and automate your Google Docs, Sheets, and Gmail with Google Apps Script. This course is designed for the absolute beginner, meaning no previous experience with Google Apps Script is required.

Once you have completed this computer based training course, you will have learned how to customize, enhance, and automate your Docs, Sheets, and Gmail with Google Apps Script.

Video: Apps Script for beginners

The key to using Google Apps Script is understanding its underlying language – JavaScript. The course teaches you enough of the concepts and syntax of JavaScript that you’ll come away with the ability to confidently code Google Apps Script tasks on your own.

Live Book
Manning liveproject create ai powered Google Workspace Add-ons

create, implement and test a Workspace Add-on

add functionality from a collection of Google Cloud APIs such as Cloud Storage, CardService, Drive and others

organize extracted data from a variety of documents using the Google AI Platform 

Manning LiveProject

bruce mcpherson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.mcpher.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at code use guidelines