Searching for (a) Pulse (CLI tool)

I’ve been searching for a way to suspend the Pulse Secure VPN connection from the command line for a while.

jamCommand doesn’t do it.

Pulse Launcher doesn’t work on Mac.

TL;DR

Use Automator to control Pulse Secure through the menu item.

Here are the finished scripts.

---

Notes

1. Download the automator scripts here.

2. Open the .zip, move vpn-suspend and vpn-resume to ~/Desktop/

3. Open Automator, open vpn-suspend, modify the script’s menu item as needed.

     on run {input, parameters}
      -- System events are crazy slow, so ignore responses and kill them after.
      ignoring application responses
        tell application "System Events"
          click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "Pulse Secure"
        end tell
      end ignoring
   
      -- Modify the delay as needed.  We're not waiting for the UI (see above).
      delay 0.1
   
      -- so slow https://en.it1352.com/article/1b646ad9e7224b26b7229c31bc9196f3.html
      do shell script "killall System\\ Events"
   
      tell application "System Events"
        -- YOU NEED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF THE MENU ITEM HERE
        click menu item "MyConnection-East-MAC" of menu 1 of menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "Pulse Secure"
        click menu item "Suspend" of menu 1 of menu item "MyConnection-East-MAC" of menu 1 of menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "Pulse Secure"
      end tell
    end run
   

4. Save the Automator script.

5. Right-click vpn-suspend on ~/Desktop and select “Open.” This will give you an opportunity to add it to the the list of trusted apps.

   

6. Change vpn-suspend the same way.

7. You can run these from the command line with open ~/Desktop/vpn-suspend.app.

8. Create aliases for open ~/Desktop/vpn-suspend.app and open ~/Desktop/vpn-resume.app

Example in Fish

# ~/.config/fish/config.fish

alias vpns="open ~/Desktop/vpn-suspend.app"
alias vpnr="open ~/Desktop/vpn-resume.app"

Demo

Troubleshooting

If you get errors when running like this

…you may need to add (or remove then add) it in System Preferences > Security & Privacy.

If you see an error like

The action “Run AppleScript” encountered an error: “System Events got an error: Can’t get menu 1 of menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process “Pulse Secure”. Invalid index.”

… try running the command again. It’s time-based, so it may have tried to run faster it could have. If this is persistent, try modifying the script in Automator to use a larger delay. You’ll need to re-trust the app each time you modify it, FYI.