I get 20 of each when I run it and then it stops itself (thankfully). If you didn’t check ignore, then it would do something weird… it would take both the current folder and the new folder and recursively re-create pairs of folders. Instead, it only reads Storage, whose value it puts in the ‘where’ field. So by checking ignore in my workflow, nothing is automatically passed between the ‘set value’ and ‘new folder’ actions. In the normal display, there is a directional aspect to the connection. As an aside, Apple did a poor job with this in the ‘dark’ version. So I think of it as there being both explicit (Storage variable) and implicit (current folder) references being passed on. And visually, you can see that with the connection between actions, which disappear when you check ignore. How automator seems to work is that each action automatically passes whatever it did on to the next (unless you ‘ignore’). What helped me is that I managed to get a ‘run applescript’ action throw up a dialogue displaying what the input was and how it basically stuck two unrelated file references into a single output and how that changed when I checked ignore. I really wish that Apple had made an easy method of showing the user what the inputs and outputs are. Part of the problem for me is that I always feel uncomfortable with ‘run applescript/shell’ in automator when I can’t know exactly what file references are being passed on. A while ago I managed to do something using one so now I’ll use them occasionally.

I share those frustrations with figuring out how automator works under the hood, and for years and years I too avoided using variables.

Create folder macos