Stairways Software

Excellence In Software For Over Twenty Years – Only with a Mac

Press Release for 4 Jul 2013

Stairways Software releases Keyboard Maestro 6.1

Perth, Western Australia - 4 July 2013 - Stairways Software Pty Ltd is pleased to announce Keyboard Maestro 6.1, the new version of its powerful productivity enhancer for Mac OS X.

Version 6.1 adds control for setting Safari or Google Chrome checkboxes and radio buttons. There is also new actions to pop open the Keyboard Maestro status menu, suspend the login and display the Login Window, logs to the Engine.log file. Also new is the Cancel Just This Macro (subroutine) action and the Break From Loop action.

This version also attempts to obscure potential passwords in the clipboard history (option click on them to display them). If you note false positives or negatives in the ability to detect passwords, please let us know. Concealed passwords are removed from the clipboard history after they reach position ten.

Speaking of letting us know, Keyboard Maestro now has a build in feedback mechanism under the Help menu, choose Report Bugs or Feature Requests to send us direct feedback, although you can continue to use any method to send us anything you think will help make Keyboard Maestro better.

Version 6.1 adds a new Hidden field type to the plug in actions to allow direct access to text token information, as well as adding support for cleaner looking labels by trimming off prefixes before a double underscore when displaying the Prompt For User Input action (eg myMacro__Text).

Keyboard Maestro 6.1 also further enhances compatibility with the upcoming OS X Mavericks by forcing the system to notice we need accessibility as soon as Keyboard Maestro launches, ensuring an obvious first use behaviour.

Plus a bunch of minor bug fixes and cleanup of some of the non-edit displays for various actions.

Watch the What's New Video on the home page to see some of the new features.

With over a hundred improvements in version 6.x, there is bound to be something for everyone.

Changes for 6.1

• Added an Set Safari/Google Chrome Checkbox action.
• Added an Set Safari/Google Chrome Radio Button action.
• Added an action to pop open the Keyboard Maestro status menu.
• Added an action to suspend the login and display the Login Window.
• Conceal probable passwords in the clipboard history.
• Added Cancel Just This Macro (subroutine) action.
• Added Break From Loop action.
• Added a Log action which logs to the Engine.log file.
• Added new Hidden type to plugin actions, so you can easily pass tokenised text.
• Added Acorn-style Feedback panel.
• Prompt For User Input labels trims prefixes before double underscore (eg myMacro__Text).
• Improved Accessibility detection and behaviour under Mavericks.
• Read the plain text version of the clipboard in the text tokens when only plain text is desired.

Bug fixes for 6.1:

• Chrome Actions had Safari Icons.
• Number Pad numbers were off by one in conflict palette selection.
• Variables preference pane allows deleteing of Password variables.
• Plug In actions did not display details in non-edit mode.
• Fixed non-edit display of wireless triggers.
• Fixed non-edit display of show menu action.
• Fixed non-edit display of Set Variable to Calculation to show format.
• Added Disabled on This Mac to non-edit display of macro groups.
• Adjusted ICUDateTimeFor token to be relative to unix time.
• Adjusted clipboard reading code to deal with Safari and its wonky web archives. Again.
• Avoid reading clipboard contents with transient flavour markers.
• Allow the For Each Files collection to scan the root (/) folder.
• The Disabled on this Mac checkbox did not appear until after restarting the editor.
• Fixed the Wrap filter
• Fixed a bug that could affect typing if you changed keyboard layouts.
• Made sure Quit Engine on Editor Quit was not left enabled from MAS version.

Major Changes for 6.0

• Requires Mac OS X 10.8.
• Macro Syncing - share your macros across multiple Macs.
• Plug In Actions - use or write new actions.
• Full support for Styled Text and Named Clipboards.
• Support for controlling Safari and Google Chrome web pages.
• Trigger Macros by Name - trigger any active macro from a single key.
• Fantastic new icons from Iconaholic.
• Customizable macro icons and a new Icon Chooser and creator.
• Macro Debugger allows stepping through macros.
• Retina Happy Graphics.

New Triggers

• USB Device is attached or detached.
• Wireless Network is connected or disconnected.
• Volume is mounted or unmounted.
• At Engine Launch.

New Actions

• Plug In Actions - write your own!
• Show a Menu.
• Search Variable or (Named) Clipboard and capture components of regular expressions.
• Get Substring from Variable or (Named) Clipboard.
• Activate macro groups including showing as a palette.
• Copy (Named) Clipboard to (Named) Clipboard.
• Display notification in the Mountain Lion notification center.
• Set Variable to Keychain Password and Set Keychain Password to Text.
• Stop Screen Saver.
• Sleep and Wake Screens.
• Set Network Location.
• Set Find Pasteboard.
• Lots of new Debugger actions:
  • Start or Finish Debugging.
  • Control whether new macros start Paused or Running.
  • Breakpoint or Continue this macro or all macros.
  • Breakpoint, Continue, Step Into, Out or Over other macros.
• Toggle Global Macro Palette.

Clipboards & Styled Text

• Apply Styles (Font, Colors, Underlines, etc) to (Named) Clipboard.
• Search & Replace Clipboard preserves styles.
• Filter Clipboard preserves styles.
• Text Tokens preserves styles (particularly the clipboard tokens).
• Named Clipboards preference pane allows editing styled text or setting images.
• Extend Set (Named) Clipboard to Text to support styled text.
• Extend Insert Text to support pasting styled text.
• Extend Write File to support writing styled text.
• Extend Display Text to support styled text.
• Extend Composite Image to support styled text.
• Extend Set Clipboard to Text to allow specifying Named Clipboards.
• Extend Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard to allow specifying Named Clipboards.
• Extend Search & Replace Clipboard to allow specifying Named Clipboards.
• Extend Filter Clipboard to allow specifying Named Clipboards.
• Extend Apply Text Factory to allow specifying Named Clipboards.

Safari and Google Chrome Actions

• New Window with URL.
• New Tab with URL.
• Next Tab, Previous Tab, Select Tab.
• Set URL, Set Title.
• Wait to Finish Loading.
• Click Link.
• Get/Set Fields.
• Submit or Reset a Form.
• Focus or Select a Field.
• Execute JavaScript.
• New text tokens %SafariTitle%, %SafariURL%, %SafariReadyState%, %SafariField%, %SafariJavaScript%.
• New text tokens %ChromeTitle%, %ChromeURL%, %ChromeReadyState%, %ChromeField%, %ChromeJavaScript%.
• New functions SAFARITABINDEX(), SAFARITABCOUNT(), SAFARIISCOMPLETE().
• New functions CHROMETABINDEX(), CHROMETABCOUNT(), CHROMEISCOMPLETE().

Preferences

• Extend Named Clipboards preference pane to allow editing.
• Added Variables pane to Preferences, including editing.
• Added selectable and contributable status menu icons.

Editor & UI

• Added Sort by Macro Modification.
• Added Sort by Macro Execution.
• Macros and Macro Groups can now have custom icons.
• Status Menu lists and allows you to cancel running macros.
• Added Duplicate command for Macro Groups.
• Detect and report when the system is stuck in Secure Input mode.
• Added a Set Time Out button at the bottom of the macro editor.
• Copy as Image and Copy as Text for macros and actions (and contextual menu).
• Enhanced the non-edit display to show full details of actions.
• Enhance the conflict palette to allow selecting with letter keys.
• Added ISO Section, JIS Yen, Underscore, Key Pad Comma, Eisu and Kana to hot key popup menu.
• Hold down shift while pasting from the clipboard switchers to paste as plain text.
• Don't expand calculation fields just because they are negative.
• Option click on the Macro Group Palette Keyboard Maestro icon to edit the macro group.
• Adjusted the size of application icons in menus to 16x16.
• Improved the look of the macro group activation toggle display.
• Left/Right Arrows disclose/close actions. Option-Left/Right applies to all actions in that list.
• Remember the location of the conflict palette.
• Recorded clicks can be adjusted to any corner of the main screen or front window after recording.
• Added recording count down before starting recording.
• Added a Pause button to the recording window.
• Added an Insert 1 Second Pause button to the recording window.
• Record mouse drags.
• Record mouse right, centre and other button clicks.
• Added "Or by Ruby script" to script trigger examples.
• Added "Or by script" to Quick Macro action.
• Added Expand/Collapse Action and Expand/Collapse All Actions menu items.
• Remember activation of macro group palettes across changes of applications.
• Changed View→Edit menu to Start/Stop Editing Macros.

Triggers

• Allow non-ASCII characters in typed string triggers.
• Command or Control keys, or shift-space cancels a typed string trigger.
• Allow delete and correct in typed string triggers.
• Allow While Logged in Trigger to trigger ever second (previously the minimum was 3 seconds).

Actions

• Better text insertion of non-ASCII characters with dead keys.
• Extend Resize Image to support Resize to Fit option.
• Enhanced Manipulate Window action to allow specifying an application.
• Extended Execute Script to allow storing the output to (Named) Clipboard.
• Extended Set Variable to Calculation to allow custom number formatting.
• Enhanced Screen Image condition to allow "contains uniquely" and "does not contain uniquely".
• Enhanced performance of finding an image on the screen by 2 to 20 times.
• Added ability to visually see images found on the screen.
• Added option in Activate Application to control whether all windows are activated.
• Add Move & Resize option to Manipulate Window.
• Add defaults options to Move & Resize Window for Left/Right column, etc.
• Added default text setting for Search Web action.
• If Prompt For User Input field starts with a | then token expansion happens before separator parsing.
• Support text token expansion in iTunes and QuickTime Player controls.
• Added Minimize and Unminimize to Manipulate Window.
• Added Select Menu Result, Mouse Click Result and Press Button Result variables to report results.

Text Tokens

• New text token %|% allows you to position the cursor after insertion.
• New text token %ICUDateTimeFor%.
• New text token %WirelessNetwork%.
• New text token %MacUUID% to identify this Mac.
• Added Main,Second,Third,Internal,External as special screen indexes for %Screen%.
• Support adding months or years in the ICUDateTimePlus/Minus token.

Calculation Functions

• Added Main,Second,Third,Internal,External as special screen indexes for SCREEN().
• Added . notation for accessing point/rectangle coordinates (eg Screen1.width).
• Added Context Sensitive Calculation Functions:
  • IMAGE(Width|Height) - the action image size.
  • SOURCEIMAGE(Width|Height) - the action source image size.
  • WINDOW(Left|Right|Top|Bottom|Width|Height|MidX|MidY) - the action window coordinates.
  • LENGTH() - the action text length.
  • FONTSIZE() - the original font size during the Apply Style action.
• Added an optional percentage offset to the coordinate functions, eg SCREEN(External,Left,52%).
• Added CLIPBOARDSEED() function which changes when the clipboard does.
• Allow Em or En dash or Unicode Minus symbol as synonyms for minus in calculations.

Conditions

• Added USB Device Condition to test for the existence of specific devices.
• Added Wireless Network Condition to test for connections to specific networks.
• Added Text Condition.
• Enhanced Menu condition to test for marked (checked) menus.
• Enhanced Button condition to test for checkbox states.
• Enhanced Front Window condition to test non-front applications.

Collections

• Added the ability to count downwards in the Range collection.

In Detail

• Removed the ability of the AppleScript process tokens command to leak Password/PW variables.
• Added com.adobe.illustrator.hfs to the excluded clipboard flavour list.
• Removed default 0.01 delay between adding keys to the event queue.
• Reduced the overhead of Pause Until.
• Added option to disable a macro group on just this Mac.
• Added "reload" AppleScript command to the editor.
• Consider a focussed sheet to be the front window for window indexing purposes.

Technical

• Requires Mac OS X 10.8+
• 64-bit only with Automatic Reference Counting.
• Web Server is built into Keyboard Maestro Engine.

Bug Fixes

• Capslock disabled the Command-Tab Keyboard Maestro application switcher.
• Worked around an issue where Safari copies non-text data.
• Move Mouse, with Restore Mouse Location checked but hidden, does nothing.
• Added code to remove "safe save" .dat files from preferences folder.
• Fixed issue if Application Switcher is triggered with just the shift key as a modifier.
• Fixed Switch to Next Application erroneous timeout abort.
• Fixed the power calculation (x^y).
• Fixed the ternary calculation (x?y:z).
• Fixed sorting characters showing up in macro group palette titles.
• Fixed a potential crash involving windows without titles.
• Fixed finding an image on the screen on Retina screens.

Keyboard Maestro 6.x requires Mac OS X 10.8 or greater.

Keyboard Maestro is engineered by Stairways Software Pty Ltd and distributed by FastSpring. Keyboard Maestro is licensed on a per user basis, and an individual user can use it on five Macs.

New customers can purchase Keyboard Maestro from <http://purchase.keyboardmaestro.com/> for US$36. Customers with five or more users should contact us for a volume discount quote.

Customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro directly from us after October 1, 2012 have been issued a free upgrade to Keyboard Maestro 6. If you have not received your free license, you can find your free license upgrade at <http://enquiry.stairways.com/>.

Customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro 5 prior to October 2012 can upgrade to Keyboard Maestro 6 for US$18 until July 31, 2013 and for US$25 after that date. Customers who purchased older versions of Keyboard Maestro can upgrade to Keyboard Maestro 6 for US$25. If you have not received your instructions on how to upgrade, you can find details by looking up your Keyboard_Maestro license at <http://enquiry.stairways.com/>.

Keyboard Maestro 6 is not available from the Mac App Store and probably never will be, but customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro 5 on the Mac App Store can convert their license to a direct license by option clicking the "Mac App Version" text in the Keyboard Maestro about box and following the instructions and will then be eligible for a paid upgrade to version 6 for US$18 until July 31, 2013 and for US$25 after that date.

A fully-functional unlicensed trial version of Keyboard Maestro can be downloaded from <http://download.keyboardmaestro.com/>.

For sales enquires, volume purchases, customer service, technical support, or to contact project management, our current contact information is listed at <http://contact.stairways.com/>.

Extensive online documentation on Keyboard Maestro can be found at <http://documentation.keyboardmaestro.com/>.

A brief taste of Keyboard Maestro in action can be found at <http://screenshots.keyboardmaestro.com/>.

For more information about anything to do with Keyboard Maestro visit <http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/>.

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