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This blog is a historical archive only. It might be revived one day, but is not currently active.

Keyboard Maestro and Sierra

There are no known problems with Keyboard Maestro on macOS Sierra.

The current version (7.3) has no known problems on macOS Sierra.

If you download Keyboard Maestro, make sure to move it to the Applications folder or any other location after the download to disable Apple’s new Gatekeeper Path Randomization, otherwise version updates will fail (other than that, Keyboard Maestro does not care where it is run from).

In fact, all versions back to version 2.1.3 continue to work with macOS Sierra (with the exception of some visual artefacts and that they do not know about modern Accessibility Permission requirements).

Posted Tuesday, September 20, 2016. Permalink. Post a Comment.

Keyboard Maestro 2015 State of the Union

2015 has been a great year for Keyboard Maestro.

2015 saw Keyboard Maestro version 7 released, the sixth major version that I have released over the last eleven years. Keyboard Maestro 7 was well received and it seems that most users have upgraded which is always nice to see - at least it means the new version is providing good value to existing customers which is very important to me, and why Keyboard Maestro has always had a paid upgrade system so that my interests and existing users interests are aligned.

2015 also saw the significant growth of the forum which now has almost 1500 topics, almost all of which get some sort of answers. Without really wanting to single anyone out as there are so many helpful people on the forum, I have to thank especially to @ccstone, @JMichaelTX and @ComplexPoint who between then have posted over 2000 replies (which is a quarter of all the replies on the forum!). There is absolutely no way I could support all the Keyboard Maestro users without the help of all of you.

Speaking of all the Keyboard Maestro users, Keyboard Maestro’s user base continues to grow, up about 20% from last year. In fact, Keyboard Maestro has grown at a rate of roughly 10% every five months for the last six years which is pretty amazing, and I think stands as a testament to all the folks who use and get value out of Keyboard Maestro promoting it to the people they know. So to all of you who have encouraged a friend or colleague to try Keyboard Maestro, I would like to offer my thanks.

2015 also saw a massive improvement to the wiki, again thanks to a number of folks. With version 7’s release, it also saw a tight integration with the wiki so that you can get direct help on triggers, actions, tokens, functions, collections, conditions.

So all in all, a great year. Hopefully for all of you, Keyboard Maestro continues to be an essential tool, something you are happy to continue recommending to others. There remains a thousand things on the todo list, so there is lots more to come over the years ahead.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you, wishing you all a productive year, leaving lots of time left to spend with friends and family!

Posted Thursday, December 31, 2015. Permalink. 3 Comments.

Keyboard Maestro 6.4.8

Version 6.4.8 was released today, largely to work around a number of problematic Yosemite bugs.

Yosemite bugs causes the Speak Text action to complete immediately (before speaking), the popup menus to turn white when you hover over them, and lock up in the reachability API after sleep. These and the welcome screen display should be resolved for Yosemite now.

There is no way to fix the Yosemite Accessibility permission bugs (this is a buggy Apple security facility, and if we could fix a security facility, then it would be even more buggy!). However version 6.4.8 adds some more help in working through this bug.

There are also a number of other small changes that snuck in to what is hopefully the last version on Keyboard Maestro 6.x. There is now a limit on the Undo stack size, support for the Corsair K95 G keys, you can use up to 9999 Seconds/Minutes/Hours in the While Logged In Trigger, and a couple spelling mistakes have been fixed.

Also, this version resolves some issues with the Image processing actions on Retina Macs.

Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2015. Permalink. Post a Comment.

OS X Yosemite

OS X Yosemite is now available and Keyboard Maestro is, for all practical purposes, fully compatible with Yosemite. In fact, Keyboard Maestro versions going back as far as version 2.x still work fine on Yosemite.

I've been running on the Yosemite betas since the first developer release, and while Yosemite has a few issues, it is basically solid.

There are, however, two cosmetic bugs in Yosemite that affect Keyboard Maestro version 4.0 and up. One is a weird flashing of the focus ring in some fields, and another more obvious ones is that the popup menus used in most Keyboard Maestro actions turn white (almost invisible) when you hover over them. Both of these have been reported to Apple, and it is disappointing they were not fixed before the release of Yosemite. Still, they are cosmetic only, so other than being slightly irritating they do not affect the behaviour ofKeyboard Maestro.

There is a bug in the NSSpeechSynthesizer that returns isPlaying as false immediately. This means the Speak Text Action in Keyboard Maestro finishes immediately, so the text is not spoken. As a workaround, you can set a variable named "Text to Speak" to the text you want, then you can use the Execute Shell Script action with the command: say "$KMVAR_Text_to_Speak"

There is also a bug in the Yosemite accessibility setting system which can cause problems allowing accessibility access to applications including the Keyboard Maestro Engine, see the Troubleshooting Yosemite GM and Accessibility Settings Problems section on the wiki for a workaround. This is a further regression from the Mavericks accessibility settings which frequently required a restart after making the changes before they would be properly applied.

One hopes that these bugs will be quickly remedied in future releases of Yosemite.

Updated Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 12:00 AM. Permalink. Post a Comment.

Take Control of Automating Your Mac

TidBITS has released a new eBook by Joe Kissel called Take Control of Automating Your Mac.

There is lots of good stuff in there for increasing your automation skills. It includes a big chunk on Keyboard Maestro, but also lots of other automation tips and ideas.

So if you've been hanging out for a Take Control of Keyboard Maestro, well, this is the next best thing!

Posted Saturday, June 28, 2014. Permalink. Post a Comment.

➽QuickCursor With Sublime Text

Pedro Lobo describes how to mimic QuickCursor's functionally using Sublime Text 3.

From: Pedro Lobo

Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Doxie, Keyboard Interface

Living markov describes a couple of simple macros for adding keyboard navigation in Doxie.

From: Living markov

Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Launch your favorite apps as needed with Keyboard Maestro

T J Luoma describes how you can make an application's hot keys work even when the application is not running.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Friday, March 14, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Toggle JavaScript in Safari with Keyboard Maestro

T J Luoma describes in glorious detail how to use Keyboard Maestro to toggle or show the JavaScript state in Safari.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Sunday, March 9, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Using the Pebble to Control Your Mac (and iPad)

Joseph Schmitt shows off some black magic that allows you to control your Mac or iPad using a Pebble and a Mac server running Keyboard Maestro.

From: Joseph Schmitt

Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Convert to Title Case

Bakari Chavanu shows a macro makes it easy to add a title case to a group of words.

From: Keyboard Maestro Tips on Tumblr

Posted Saturday, March 1, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽MacBooks and Auto WiFi Depending on Ethernet Availability Using Keyboard Maestro | Shahāda

Shahāda shows how to use a volume mount trigger when docking to a MacBook to automatically turn on/off wifi.

From: Shahāda

Posted Saturday, March 1, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽How to Automatically Open an Application On a Second Monitor

Bakari Chavanu shows how to have an application’s window automatically move to a second monitor when it activates.

From: Mac Automation Tips — Getting Things Done Faster on Your Mac

Posted Thursday, February 27, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽The Entry-Level Tour of Keyboard Maestro

Nathan Crowther gives a quick entry level view of what Keyboard Maestro can do.

From: The Daily Mac View — Musings, Reflections and Analysis on all things Mac and IOS

Posted Saturday, February 22, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽A Simple “Open In Chrome” Keyboard Maestro Macro for Safari

Federico Viticci shows a macro to open the current Safari page in Chrome (useful for all of us who have Flash disabled system wide and use Chrome as a Flash-viewer).

From: MacStories

Posted Wednesday, January 29, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Keyboard Maestro macro to get URL to selected message in Mail.app

Matt Henderson describes a macro to get the “message:” URL for the current Mail.,app message.

From: The Dafacto Blog

Posted Tuesday, January 28, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Word Expansion macro that pastes a selected word

This clever pair of macros by Bakari Chavanu lets you copy a word, and then easily paste it in multiple places. The first macro copies the word you just typed to a named clipboard, and the second macro pastes that pre-copied word in. Both use a Typed String trigger. This makes it easy to repeat a word multiple times (eg a person's name).

From: Mac Automators — Google Plus

Posted Monday, January 27, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Toggling window positions like 1-2-3-4

Patrick Welker continues his coverage of Keyboard Maestro with this article showing how to move windows to set locations.

From: Rocket Ink — Writing with Space Ink

Posted Sunday, January 19, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Using Keyboard Maestro with Automator and Applescript

Kerry Dawson discusses in detail how to use Automator and AppleScript to extend the power of Keyboard Maestro.

From: The Daily Mac View — Musings, Reflections and Analysis on all things Mac and IOS

Posted Friday, January 17, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Insert Markdown link using Keyboard Maestro

Jason Verly shows a macro that inserts a markdown styled link based on the current Safari URL.

From: The Other Side of MyGeekDaddy

Posted Friday, January 17, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Planning your Keyboard Maestro macros and Text Expander Snippets

Joe at Mac Grease gives some tips on breaking up macros and snippets into smaller parts so they can be more reusable.

From: Mac Grease – Make your Mac work for you

Posted Sunday, January 12, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Speedier Acorn filter with Keyboard Maestro

Dr. Drang shows an Acorn "filter with custom settings" macro that demonstrates how you can extend an application using Keyboard Maestro.

From: And now it’s all this

Posted Saturday, January 11, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Maximize OS X App Windows

Jason Verly shows a macro to maximize windows to full screen size.

From: The Other Side of MyGeekDaddy

Posted Wednesday, January 1, 2014. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Macworld Mac Gems of the Year: 2013

Dan Frakes names his Mac Gems of the Year for 2013, including Keyboard Maestro and many other fine applications.

From: Macworld

Posted Friday, December 27, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Evernote Filing Suite For Keyboard Maestro

Patrick Welker produces and documents in exquisite detail a complete filing suite for Evernote.

From: Rocket Ink — Writing with Space Ink

Posted Sunday, December 22, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

Keyboard Maestro won a Macworld Editors' Choice Award!

Eddy Photo

Hundreds of products pass through the hands of the Macworld editors every year, some are much anticipated devices riding a wave of hype, others are quietly released and seemingly come from nowhere. They see products from Forture 500 companies, one-person outfits, and everything in-between. Out of all the products they see, a few stand out above the rest and are recognized with an Editors’ Choice Award.

This year, Keyboard Maestro 6 was selected as one of the best products of the year and awarded a coveted Eddy!

Thanks Macworld! And thank you to all our fantastic customers who made this possible.

Posted Tuesday, December 17, 2013. Permalink. Post a Comment.

➽Keyboard Maestro 6: Минимум времени, максимум эффективности - iLand Бизнес

A Russian review of Keyboard Maestro 6.

From: iLand

Posted Tuesday, December 10, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Updated Notes Palette Filing Macro

Patrick Welker describes updates to his Notes Filing Palette, with lots of detail on the why and how of it.

From: Rocket Ink — Writing with Space Ink

Posted Monday, December 9, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Shorten a link with a custom domain in bit.ly

Phillip Gruneich shows how to create a macro to shorten a URL with bit.ly.

From: Phillip Gruneich

Posted Saturday, December 7, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Get a URL while you type with Keyboard Maestro

Joe at Mac Grease shows a macro that copies the current Safari URL from Safari in the background.

From: Mac Grease – Make your Mac work for you

Posted Thursday, December 5, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽uruchomienie makra po odblokowaniu komputera

Polish article describing a clever wait for a macro to wait until the Mac is not screen saving, although for this specific case you can use the SCREENSAVER() function to detect whether the Mac is screen saving.

From: AppleSauce – Different Thinking

Posted Thursday, November 28, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽A quick macro for closing multiple Safari tabs

Hetu Ashara shows a macro which closes all your Safari tabs leaving you with a clean slate.

From: Silent Uproar — Interpret the Oxymoron, Interpret the World

Posted Monday, November 25, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Review: Friday Favorite: How Keyboard Maestro saved my Mavericks Macros

Erica Sadun finally switched from Quickeys to Keyboard Maestro and rapidly became a rabid fan. In her review she describes why, as well as how she uses Keyboard Maestro for a wide variety of tasks.

Read the review to see why people inevitably say “Why didn’t I switch sooner”.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Friday, November 22, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Revisiting Single Application Mode in light of Mavericks' App Nap feature

T J Luoma explains Single Application Mode, Mavericks App Nap, and how Keyboard Maestro can help.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Thursday, November 21, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Forced productivity with Keyboard Maestro

Michael Laccheo describes a brutally efficient method of using Keyboard Maestro to stay on task.

From: So, it’s come to this...

Posted Wednesday, November 20, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Integrating Alfred & Keyboard Maestro - Ian Sinnott

Ian Sinnott has created an Alfred workflow to allow Alfred to trigger Keyboard Maestro macros.

From: Ian Sinnott

Posted Thursday, November 14, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽File Important Notes Quickly With Keyboard Maestro

Joe shows off a fun macro that lets you save selected text to a file for later processing.

From: Mac Grease – Make your Mac work for you

Posted Wednesday, November 13, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Revised Time Tracking Macro

T J Luoma walks you through the details of his time tracking macro that takes a labeled screenshot every thirty seconds.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Thursday, November 7, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽An If Then Else Macro with Keyboard Maestro

Joe at Mac Grease shows how to automate data entry, including Prompting and If Then Else formatting.

From: Mac Grease – Make your Mac work for you

Posted Thursday, November 7, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Stop Dropbox on Battery

Matthias Guenther tweets his simple macro to stop Dropbox when you are on battery power, and restart it when you plug in.

From: Twitter

Posted Monday, November 4, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Keyboard Maestro Tips

Bakari Chavanu maintains a very useful Tips tumblr you may like to follow. I will repost more things from there here as well in due course.

From: Keyboard Maestro Tips on Tumblr

Posted Monday, November 4, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Dipping my toes into Keyboard Maestro - All this

Dr. Drang describes how he gets the same hot key to sort by name and date consistently with Finder and Transmit.

From: And now it’s all this

Posted Monday, November 4, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Remotely Generating Octopress

Phaedra Deepsky shows how to remotely run a shell command (rake generate in this case) with a single keystroke.

From: vegans with typewriters

Posted Saturday, November 2, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Toggle Asterisks and Hyphen Markdown List Markers Macro

Patrick Welker shows a macro that can toggle between asterisks (*) and hyphen (-) in markdown lists.

From: Rocket Ink — Writing with Space Ink

Posted Saturday, October 26, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Automatisch ScanSnap software starten met Keyboard Maestro

Niels Gouman describes (in Dutch) the auto-connecting ScanSnap macros that every Keyboard Maestro/ScanSnap user should have.

From: Lifehacking — Slimmer werken en moeiteloos leven

Posted Friday, October 25, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Keyboard Maestro Macros for URL’s

Patrick Welker shows a set of macros for extracting URLs, fetching titles and formatting links. Great detail on the actions.

From: Rocket Ink — Writing with Space Ink

Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Application to launch specific applications, windows, and tabs

TJ Luoma answers a question on Ask Different showing how to launch applications into specific states.

From: Ask Different

Posted Wednesday, October 23, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Maximize UI for Rdio & Simplify | Carrying Stones

Eric Beavers shows a clever macro to zoom the front window depending on whether Rdio is currently running.

From: Carrying Stones – moving a mountain one stone at a time

Posted Sunday, October 20, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽Android to DayOne on a Mac

David Allen shows how he uses Keyboard Maestro and DropBox to transfer notes from Android to DayOne on his Mac.

From: David Allen – YouTube

Posted Tuesday, October 15, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

➽A simple Keyboard Maestro macro for plain-text pasting anywhere

T J Luoma shows one of the simplest and yet most useful macros which just types the system clipboard.

From: TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Posted Monday, October 14, 2013. Permalink. Source Link. Post a Comment.

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