Sort Unique Lines Action for Mac

Overview

What Sort Unique Lines does

Handles standard and rich-text line breaks, trims a list, removes exact duplicate lines, and sorts the remaining entries case-insensitively with a deterministic tie-breaker.

Category	Text Editing & Formatting
Action type	JavaScript
Default result	Replace selected text by default
Internet	Not required

Example

Action and outcome

Sort Unique Lines example
Action	Outcome
Sort Unique LinesSelected text: Mango Apple Pear Apple	Apple Mango Pear

Workflow

Use Sort Unique Lines

Follow these steps to remove duplicate lines and sort the remaining text with ActionClip.

Select the text you want to use.
Choose Sort Unique Lines from ActionClip.
In editable text, ActionClip replaces the selection immediately. In read-only text, it opens the result for review and copying.

Before you add it

Requirements and privacy

Before you start: No setup required.
Your selected text: Runs locally in ActionClip’s JavaScript sandbox. Selected text does not leave your Mac.

Inspect before installing

Action script

The script below is included so you can inspect how the action works before downloading it.

JavaScript definition

function run(selected_text) {
  const lines = selected_text
    .split(/\r\n|[\n\r\u000B\u000C\u0085\u2028\u2029]/)
    .map((line) => line.trim())
    .filter(Boolean);

  function naturalCompare(a, b) {
    const chunksA = a.match(/\d+|\D+/g) || [];
    const chunksB = b.match(/\d+|\D+/g) || [];
    const count = Math.max(chunksA.length, chunksB.length);

    for (let index = 0; index < count; index += 1) {
      if (chunksA[index] === undefined) return -1;
      if (chunksB[index] === undefined) return 1;
      const partA = chunksA[index];
      const partB = chunksB[index];
      const numericA = /^\d+$/.test(partA);
      const numericB = /^\d+$/.test(partB);

      if (numericA && numericB) {
        const valueA = partA.replace(/^0+(?=\d)/, "");
        const valueB = partB.replace(/^0+(?=\d)/, "");
        if (valueA.length !== valueB.length) return valueA.length - valueB.length;
        if (valueA !== valueB) return valueA < valueB ? -1 : 1;
        if (partA.length !== partB.length) return partA.length - partB.length;
      } else {
        const foldedA = partA.toLocaleLowerCase();
        const foldedB = partB.toLocaleLowerCase();
        if (foldedA !== foldedB) return foldedA < foldedB ? -1 : 1;
      }
    }

    return a < b ? -1 : a > b ? 1 : 0;
  }

  return [...new Set(lines)].sort(naturalCompare).join("\n");
}