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Keyboard maestro examples5/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Note! Here's one important potential "gotcha" for this: Skitch has an option in its preferences which will allow it to run only in the menu bar and not in the Dock. This is the "Else" part of the "If Then Else" which started with "If Skitch is not running" so logically this section will only match if Skitch is running, in which case Skitch will see that I have pressed ⌘+ ⇧+ 5 and respond accordingly.Īfter I have used Skitch I can either leave it running if I think I might use it again, or I can just quit it, knowing that Keyboard Maestro will launch it again later if necessary. ![]() It shows me all currently available apps and all of their menus, so I just have to select the right one, and it fills in the exact details for me.)Īt the bottom of that macro window you see that the "otherwise execute the allowing actions" section is blank ("No Action"). Keyboard Maestro did that when I clicked on the "Menu" button near the right. (Note: I didn't have to fill in the menu title or menu item names either. When Keyboard Maestro sees that menu item available, I know that Skitch is now ready, so I tell Skitch to select the menu item "Crosshair Snapshot" from the "Capture" menu in Skitch. So in the macro I told Keyboard Maestro to launch Skitch and then wait until there is a menu item called "Crosshair Snapshot" (which is what Skitch calls the command I associate with ⌘+ ⇧+ 5). If your computer is doing something else which makes it a little slower, it may take longer than 5 seconds, or it may take fewer than 5 seconds, especially if your computer is idle and has an SSD. I tend to prefer using conditions because they are a little less error-prone. For example, if I could tell Keyboard Maestro to launch (or "activate") Skitch, and then tell it to pause for 5 seconds before going on to the next step. Keyboard Maestro lets you choose between either waiting for a certain number of seconds, or waiting until certain conditions are met. With any multiple-step macro like this, the key to making it work is to make sure that "Step 2" doesn't try to run before "Step 1" has a chance to finish, and so on. Building something like this is really not much more difficult than writing a Mail.app rule. Note: a larger version of this image is available on Github.Įach one of those "blocks" in Keyboard Maestro is just something that I have clicked and dragged from Keyboard Maestro's list of available actions, and selected from the various drop-down menus. So here is a screenshot of my Keyboard Maestro macro for Skitch: ![]() Some of you may already understand how to do this, but some of you may want to see how it actually looks in Keyboard Maestro. ![]() "OK, I get the idea, show me how you do it." The "Else" section is left empty, because if the app is running, we don't want Keyboard Maestro to do anything when the keyboard shortcut is pressed, because YourApp will. Over time, you learn that whenever you want to do Imagine you have some keyboard shortcut in your head, such as ⌘+ ⇧+ 5 for Skitch, or ⌘+ ⇧+ O for "Quick Add" to OmniFocus. Tom Siko asked if I'd be willing to share it, so here it is.Įven if you don't use OmniFocus, this idea can be re-used for any application that you run via keyboard shortcut, such as Skitch (or, my preference, Skitch 1). On Mac Power Users 181, I mentioned that I have a keyboard shortcut for OmniFocus' "Quick Entry" which works even if OmniFocus isn't running. ![]()
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