8 ms·

Keyboard Maestro 11

200 points by DavideNL 3y ago

jph 3y ago
Keyboard Maestro is one of the excellent software tools that I use daily. The power to configure and customize keystrokes is a godsend. I'm not affiliated, merely a very satisfied customer for years.
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  Same, easily my favorite Mac software
- eludwig 3y ago
  Seconded. This is great software sold the old-fashioned way: pay once and upgrade when you want to. The lovely lack of mental friction around this model is something I miss dearly, as opposed to endless subscriptions. But this is probably because I am an old guy and haven't adapted to our new reality. As far as KM goes, it's so well done. Very complete. Great for any one off key combos you want to add, but can do a ridiculous amount more. AND it's very well documented.
leejoramo 3y ago
By far my favorite keyboard macro tool on MacOS. Great gui interface for making and recording macros. I think it is without a peer on any platform I am well versed in AutoHotKey for Windows and have written 1000s of lines of macros in it, but Keyboard Maestro makes it so easy to create complex macros for even one time tasks. Linux is certainly lacking in tools to automate the GUI.
- c0balt 3y ago
  Maybe that's just my limited experience but a lot of Linux software that comes with a GUI like Gimp, Libreoffice or even Isabelle tend to be accompanied by a CLI or API for automating tasks. That may be less accessible than a simple GUI automation but tends to be more powerful. Though for GUI automation of, e.g., the increasing number of electron-backed apps more accessible software would be nice.
  - filmgirlcw 3y ago
    Keyboard Maestro has a CLI too. These aren’t mutually exclusive things, you can have well-designed GUI and well-designed TUI software. I would argue that while Linux has some of the latter (I am absolutely unwilling to give Linux credit for all command-line/text-based applications), it has very, very, very little of the former, largely due to a dev culture that dismisses and diminishes the importance of good design.
  - robenkleene 3y ago
    macOS is of course a Unix so it has support for CLI automation as well, and it's pretty common for macOS-exclusive applications to implement it where appropriate (e.g., https://kaleidoscope.app https://kaleidoscope.app). It also has several other forms of automation: 1. AppleScript, which often makes it faster to implement powerful scripts than a CLI because AppleScript has objects (e.g., you can iterate through the tasks in OmniFocus for example and use AppleScript's built-in date type to modify them). 2. Automator / Shortcuts, which uses a combination of hard-coded, configurable actions (e.g., an image editor would provide an action to resize an image), and URL-based automation (tell OS to open a URL, URL is sent to a specific app based on a URL scheme, app performs an action). 3. A GUI macro utility like Keyboard Maestro I point this out because something I see frequently from folks using other OSes is to mention some other approach is better than something unique to the Mac, but macOS usually also supports that other way of doing things. These options are usually additive.
  - leejoramo 3y ago
    To add to the other responses, macOS has had excellent support for a wide variety of Accessibility features/APIs. These same APIs are a boon to GUI automation tools. Even back in the Classic macOS days of System 7, it was relatively easy to fully automate your GUI applications via AppleScript and Apple Events to allow almost complete unit test coverage. Note:I have been a server side CLI Linux web dev since the late 90s. While macOS is my preferred desktop, KDE Neon has been my primary GUI for the last few years. There is much I miss from macOS, but I get along with KDE pretty well
- eviks 3y ago
  KM is indeed an awesome tool and a must-have part of the productivity combo KM+BTT+KE, though complex macros are unfortunately an area where it falls flat since drag&dropping your way through the GUI to create and refactor complex logic is rather painful
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
isykt 3y ago
>Keyboard Maestro 11 is not available from the Mac App Store and probably never will be. I appreciate the honesty here.
- dceddia 3y ago
  Aside from any business/ philosophical reasons they might have, one concrete reason for this is that the App Store prohibits apps from asking for accessibility permissions, needed for recording keystrokes, which I imagine would basically make this app impossible!
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    You can certainly try submitting an app that requests it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - ArchOversight 3y ago
    I have Moom installed from the App Store, it requires the Accessibility feature to be flipped on in Privacy and Security -> Accessibility before it'll work.
    - dceddia 3y ago
      Interesting, maybe they've changed this since I last looked at it. At some point I was pretty sure that Accessibility required unsandboxing, but App Store required sandbox enabled.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  I don't blame them. I don't put my Mac software in their app store either. Because: -High commission. -Strong downward pressure on price (how much stuff in the Mac app store is $30+ ?). -Can't sell upgrades. -I don't want Apple getting between the customer and me. -I just can't face jumping through all their arbitary hoops.
  - wingerlang 3y ago
mbrd 3y ago
I bought version 10 recently enough that I was emailed this week with a free upgrade to version 11 which I appreciated! I mainly only use it for text expansion, but it has served me well for years.
aaronscott 3y ago
Also a very satisfied customer (since 2015). I’ve used this to do everything from making clunky software easier to use to automating aspects of games that I didn’t want to do manually. Clunky software example: connect to cisco vpn each day, handling all the prompts it makes you go through. Another is to type out what’s in my copy buffer, for websites that don’t let you paste your password in. Gaming example was re-casting spells when they came off cooldown in Diablo 2/3. I’ve written hundreds of macros over the years and this app has saved me a ton of time and frustration. And probably some RSI too.
filmgirlcw 3y ago
Just a terrific application and one I look forward to paying for an upgrade to every two years or so. I looked back at my serial numbers in 1Password and they go back to version 5, so I’ve been a user for at least a decade and the app just gets better and better.
NaOH 3y ago
Keyboard Maestro is an integral part of how I use a computer. I've been using it since 2005 (v2) and it's easily among the primary reasons I can't imagine using a different OS platform. Thank you, Peter Lewis.
robenkleene 3y ago
Keyboard Maestro is my favorite applications ever. It's the one-stop-shop for an astounding array of powerful features. It can be used to replace ton of other third-party utilities. Some examples of what it can do: 1. You can easily implement your own window manager in it, e.g., replaces Moom or Magnet. 2. You can bind any AppleScript, shell script, etc... to a keyboard shortcut. 3. You can record and replay GUI macros, e.g., like Vim and Emacs macros but for any application. 4. At has a ton of built-in actions to script practically anything about your system, e.g., sleep, simulating media keys, image manipulation, etc... I suspect a lot of uses of Karabiner can be replaced by Keyboard Maestro. 5. It has a built-in clipboard history, with powerful features, like, processing an item from the clipboard with a Keyboard Maestro macro. One I use sometimes is running OCR on a screenshot I have on the clipboard. 6. You can bind any menu item in any application to a keystroke. E.g., you can rebind menu items to other keys, or adding key bindings to menu items that don't have keyboard shortcuts. 7. You can create custom command palettes (i.e., like ⇧⌘P in VS Code) for applications. For example, the command palette in Photoshop is awful, so I just made one for my common actions in Keyboard Maestro instead. All of the above can sync seamlessly between computers with any file sync service (e.g., Dropbox). It's probably the best sync I've ever used, in 5+ years of use I've never had even the slightest hiccup. I don't bother using macOS built-in settings for things Keyboard Maestro supports for this reason. Put it in Keyboard Maestro and it will automatically sync to any Mac I use (I always install Keyboard Maestro).
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  Hey how do you do #1?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  > 6. You can bind any menu item in any application to a keystroke. E.g., you can rebind menu items to other keys, or adding key bindings to menu items that don't have keyboard shortcuts. This is a macOS feature (either globally or per app) and doesn’t need a separate app. For example, I have ⇧⌘M mapped to Window > Zoom (the inverse of Minimize). This is now hidden deep in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts button > App Shortcuts.
artdigital 3y ago
Been using it for a long time but found myself more and more using Shortcuts and HammerSpoon instead. Maybe a few very basic things that I still have in KM are stuff like “paste as keyboard strokes”, muting my audio when stuff changes and the occasionally keyboard shortcut remap (because it syncs across my machines in contrast to the macOS native thing) Curious what the people here use KM for. What are some of your use cases?
- SloopJon 3y ago
  I mainly use it for text expansion, which I find easier to remember and type than multi-key shortcuts. That part of my brain is already full of Emacs key bindings. I switched from TextExpander to Keyboard Maestro years ago. I have web-specific macros that basically act as cross-browser bookmarks. I have terminal-specific macros for the shell and other REPLs. I even have a macro for a VPN client that refuses to remember my username (over twenty characters, including a domain name).
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I tried to use HammerSpoon to do a simple window rearrangement (roll20 browser window to 3/4 width and discord video chat to 1/4). It takes like 10 seconds for it to do it...
  - nchase 3y ago
    I wonder why. my hammerspoon window management stuff happens almost instantly
packetslave 3y ago
Keyboard Maestro is fantastic, and it's even better when combined with an Elgato StreamDeck. There's great integration for "run this KM macro" directly from a button (without eating up a keyboard shortcut), so I have 32 handy buttons on my StreamDeck XL for things like * open Obsidian and switch to my daily journal page" * type my password" (which reads securely from Keychain) * find the hamburger menu on the wiki, move the mouse to it, then select 'Translate to English" from the menu that pops up That last one is an example of one of Keyboard Maestro's superpowers: search for an image anywhere on screen, then take an action on it (move the mouse there, click it, etc.). Very very handy for automating things that can't easily be otherwise automated.
- shmoogy 3y ago
  I haven't felt the need to change from bettertouchtool to KBM but this... I don't think I can do via BTT type my password" (which reads securely from Keychain)
- mleo 3y ago
  StreamDeck and Keyboard Maestro are a great pair. w With KM’s ability to update the keys on StreamDeck I use it as dashboard for items in addition to actions. A key displays next upcoming meeting and changes color as it gets close. Another key shows the current VPN IP in case I need to target internal services back to my development instance. For Teams, I have button that toggles the resolution of second Studio Display to share desktop with lower resolution.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Do you need to use the Stream Deck's own software at all, then? I'm allergic to janky manufacturer-provided config apps (I'm looking at you, Logitech), and the Stream Deck app's screenshots aren't awe inspiring. I'm also uneasy about running a driver app in the background at all times to monitor which apps I'm using. That seems ripe for abuse, either by attackers who find a vulnerability in it or by the manufacturer ("hey, you seem to spend a lot of time in Drafts.app. Would you like to buy a JavaScript manual?").
cocacola1 3y ago
Don’t even know what’s inside and I know I’ll be upgrading. Such a timesaver.
dottjt 3y ago
I was actually going to make a post about software that you actually enjoy paying for and I was going to use Keyboard Maestro as one of those examples. Truly remarkable piece of software.
- bernie_mann 3y ago
  I barely read the v11 upgrade email when it hit my inbox and just renewed w/o a second thought. KM + Karabiner are the first thing I install on any new instance of macos.
iansinnott 3y ago
Keyboard Maestro is excellent. Makes automation on macOS way more fun, IMO. One nifty feature I haven't seen mentioned yet is that it can click on the screen based on OCR. So, if there's some UI element you want to interact with and you're not sure how to do it programmatically you can take a small screenshot of it and KM will use that to find the element on screen. Comes with useful visual debugging too. Also, I find it pairs well with a launcher application like Alfred or Raycast: - For Alfred: https://github.com/iansinnott/alfred-maestro https://github.com/iansinnott/alfred-maestro - For Raycast: https://www.raycast.com/eluce2/list-keyboard-maestro-macros https://www.raycast.com/eluce2/list-keyboard-maestro-macros
temende 3y ago
Easily one of the most useful and versatile Mac apps out there.
Tempest1981 3y ago
Could I use this to visit a website with a painful form, and paste in values from the columns of a CSV file, row by row?
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Yes. It's only limited by your creativity.
- leejoramo 3y ago
  The answer is most likely yes. I have done this many times. Some web forms make it very difficult. In which case you may have some places where you will need Keyboard Maestro to wait while you do some manual interactions. Still you can get most of the process automated
- mvandermeulen 3y ago
  Yes this is a particularly easy use case
jwr 3y ago
I've been using this for years and it's one of the most useful apps on my Mac. Highly recommended!
IggleSniggle 3y ago
I've been using BetterTouchTool ever since I got a Mac with a TouchBar that I wanted to make useful, and it has slowly taken over keyboard macros + gesture menus + multi-machine clipboard etc. Anybody here who has experience with both and might like to comment to compare them?
- veidr 3y ago
  They are both great, so I keep using both. There is a lot of overlap in terms of what they can do but they each have unique capabilities that the other can't do. I don't personally know all the differences. But for instance I use BTT to program my stream deck, while I use KM for my clipboard history because the built in GUI is polished.
  - filmgirlcw 3y ago
    This is me to a tee. I use both but for different things. I’m sure I could just focus on one or the other but I use both for different things.
- williamdclt 3y ago
  I switched from KM to BTT, I think it was because of the touchbar programming functionalities that BTT had I think generally BTT is more powerful (although I’m sure KM has some USP), but tbh it’s quite buggy. It hangs multiple times a day for a minute or more, and the config UI has various bugs. I’ve been thinking of switching to Hammerspoon, but I cannot really be bothered these days
siva7 3y ago
This has to be one of the longest actively developed niche software products i'm aware of. I've been using it since school and now i'm a grown-up bearded man.
Eugeleo 3y ago
Everyone in the comments swems to be in love with KM. I wonder, what do you all use it for? It sounds like I’m missing out on a lot, but when I’m thinking about it, nothing in need of automation comes to mind. That is, except for opening a few common apps and window management. What am I missing?
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  I have a whole library of text snippets around various business needs or just some links / addresses I have to send often. Something like ;elevatorpitch Will insert an elevator pitch into the email
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  So many things! Opening a specific location or app or whatever with one keystroke is great, but I often also use it to run automations/macros done in AppleScript or something else with just a few keystrokes. Extremely niche and nerdy example: Years ago, when I used to do a ton of iOS screenshot galleries for app reviews (this was when I was a tech journalist), I used a modified KM script from Federico Viticci and Gabe Weatherhead that would let me select a group of screenshots, resize them as two or three side-by-side with proper spacing between and then resize for the requirements of the CMS/website I worked for with a hot-key combo. I could even have it name the file a certain way and save it to a specific folder I had setup to auto-upload images to the CMS and then copy the image link so I could use it in my Markdown workflow that I’d cobbled together to do previewing of stuff before I put the raw HTML code in said CMS. That example was the result of like several different macros/scripts that I combined into a couple of key commands, depending on if I wanted to just do the image merging/resizing or the whole upload/copy link thing. I’m sure there could be other ways to do that, but none as seamless and intuitively as KM. It’s just a great tool. Even if you just use it for basic text expansion, it’s great - though I tend to use other tools for that — but the automation stuff is just top notch.
cocoadog 3y ago
I love the palette feature, which allows me to create shortcuts exactly two keystrokes long: https://www.notesfromandy.com/2014/08/01/double-hotkeys-with-keyboard-maestro/ https://www.notesfromandy.com/2014/08/01/double-hotkeys-with... This feature is just a sliver of all the power of Keyboard Maestro. I'm sure there are many potentially life-changing gems among the features I haven't yet explored.

200 points by DavideNL 3y ago

jph 3y ago

Keyboard Maestro is one of the excellent software tools that I use daily. The power to configure and customize keystrokes is a godsend. I'm not affiliated, merely a very satisfied customer for years.

wellthisisgreat 3y ago
Same, easily my favorite Mac software
eludwig 3y ago
Seconded. This is great software sold the old-fashioned way: pay once and upgrade when you want to. The lovely lack of mental friction around this model is something I miss dearly, as opposed to endless subscriptions. But this is probably because I am an old guy and haven't adapted to our new reality. As far as KM goes, it's so well done. Very complete. Great for any one off key combos you want to add, but can do a ridiculous amount more. AND it's very well documented.

leejoramo 3y ago

By far my favorite keyboard macro tool on MacOS. Great gui interface for making and recording macros. I think it is without a peer on any platform I am well versed in AutoHotKey for Windows and have written 1000s of lines of macros in it, but Keyboard Maestro makes it so easy to create complex macros for even one time tasks. Linux is certainly lacking in tools to automate the GUI.

c0balt 3y ago
Maybe that's just my limited experience but a lot of Linux software that comes with a GUI like Gimp, Libreoffice or even Isabelle tend to be accompanied by a CLI or API for automating tasks. That may be less accessible than a simple GUI automation but tends to be more powerful. Though for GUI automation of, e.g., the increasing number of electron-backed apps more accessible software would be nice.
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  Keyboard Maestro has a CLI too. These aren’t mutually exclusive things, you can have well-designed GUI and well-designed TUI software. I would argue that while Linux has some of the latter (I am absolutely unwilling to give Linux credit for all command-line/text-based applications), it has very, very, very little of the former, largely due to a dev culture that dismisses and diminishes the importance of good design.
- robenkleene 3y ago
  macOS is of course a Unix so it has support for CLI automation as well, and it's pretty common for macOS-exclusive applications to implement it where appropriate (e.g., https://kaleidoscope.app https://kaleidoscope.app). It also has several other forms of automation: 1. AppleScript, which often makes it faster to implement powerful scripts than a CLI because AppleScript has objects (e.g., you can iterate through the tasks in OmniFocus for example and use AppleScript's built-in date type to modify them). 2. Automator / Shortcuts, which uses a combination of hard-coded, configurable actions (e.g., an image editor would provide an action to resize an image), and URL-based automation (tell OS to open a URL, URL is sent to a specific app based on a URL scheme, app performs an action). 3. A GUI macro utility like Keyboard Maestro I point this out because something I see frequently from folks using other OSes is to mention some other approach is better than something unique to the Mac, but macOS usually also supports that other way of doing things. These options are usually additive.
- leejoramo 3y ago
  To add to the other responses, macOS has had excellent support for a wide variety of Accessibility features/APIs. These same APIs are a boon to GUI automation tools. Even back in the Classic macOS days of System 7, it was relatively easy to fully automate your GUI applications via AppleScript and Apple Events to allow almost complete unit test coverage. Note:I have been a server side CLI Linux web dev since the late 90s. While macOS is my preferred desktop, KDE Neon has been my primary GUI for the last few years. There is much I miss from macOS, but I get along with KDE pretty well
eviks 3y ago
KM is indeed an awesome tool and a must-have part of the productivity combo KM+BTT+KE, though complex macros are unfortunately an area where it falls flat since drag&dropping your way through the GUI to create and refactor complex logic is rather painful
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

isykt 3y ago

>Keyboard Maestro 11 is not available from the Mac App Store and probably never will be. I appreciate the honesty here.

dceddia 3y ago
Aside from any business/ philosophical reasons they might have, one concrete reason for this is that the App Store prohibits apps from asking for accessibility permissions, needed for recording keystrokes, which I imagine would basically make this app impossible!
- saagarjha 3y ago
  You can certainly try submitting an app that requests it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ArchOversight 3y ago
  I have Moom installed from the App Store, it requires the Accessibility feature to be flipped on in Privacy and Security -> Accessibility before it'll work.
  - dceddia 3y ago
    Interesting, maybe they've changed this since I last looked at it. At some point I was pretty sure that Accessibility required unsandboxing, but App Store required sandbox enabled.
hermitcrab 3y ago
I don't blame them. I don't put my Mac software in their app store either. Because: -High commission. -Strong downward pressure on price (how much stuff in the Mac app store is $30+ ?). -Can't sell upgrades. -I don't want Apple getting between the customer and me. -I just can't face jumping through all their arbitary hoops.
- wingerlang 3y ago

mbrd 3y ago

I bought version 10 recently enough that I was emailed this week with a free upgrade to version 11 which I appreciated! I mainly only use it for text expansion, but it has served me well for years.

aaronscott 3y ago

Also a very satisfied customer (since 2015). I’ve used this to do everything from making clunky software easier to use to automating aspects of games that I didn’t want to do manually. Clunky software example: connect to cisco vpn each day, handling all the prompts it makes you go through. Another is to type out what’s in my copy buffer, for websites that don’t let you paste your password in. Gaming example was re-casting spells when they came off cooldown in Diablo 2/3. I’ve written hundreds of macros over the years and this app has saved me a ton of time and frustration. And probably some RSI too.

filmgirlcw 3y ago

Just a terrific application and one I look forward to paying for an upgrade to every two years or so. I looked back at my serial numbers in 1Password and they go back to version 5, so I’ve been a user for at least a decade and the app just gets better and better.

NaOH 3y ago

Keyboard Maestro is an integral part of how I use a computer. I've been using it since 2005 (v2) and it's easily among the primary reasons I can't imagine using a different OS platform. Thank you, Peter Lewis.

robenkleene 3y ago

Keyboard Maestro is my favorite applications ever. It's the one-stop-shop for an astounding array of powerful features. It can be used to replace ton of other third-party utilities. Some examples of what it can do: 1. You can easily implement your own window manager in it, e.g., replaces Moom or Magnet. 2. You can bind any AppleScript, shell script, etc... to a keyboard shortcut. 3. You can record and replay GUI macros, e.g., like Vim and Emacs macros but for any application. 4. At has a ton of built-in actions to script practically anything about your system, e.g., sleep, simulating media keys, image manipulation, etc... I suspect a lot of uses of Karabiner can be replaced by Keyboard Maestro. 5. It has a built-in clipboard history, with powerful features, like, processing an item from the clipboard with a Keyboard Maestro macro. One I use sometimes is running OCR on a screenshot I have on the clipboard. 6. You can bind any menu item in any application to a keystroke. E.g., you can rebind menu items to other keys, or adding key bindings to menu items that don't have keyboard shortcuts. 7. You can create custom command palettes (i.e., like ⇧⌘P in VS Code) for applications. For example, the command palette in Photoshop is awful, so I just made one for my common actions in Keyboard Maestro instead. All of the above can sync seamlessly between computers with any file sync service (e.g., Dropbox). It's probably the best sync I've ever used, in 5+ years of use I've never had even the slightest hiccup. I don't bother using macOS built-in settings for things Keyboard Maestro supports for this reason. Put it in Keyboard Maestro and it will automatically sync to any Mac I use (I always install Keyboard Maestro).

wellthisisgreat 3y ago
Hey how do you do #1?
jonhohle 3y ago
> 6. You can bind any menu item in any application to a keystroke. E.g., you can rebind menu items to other keys, or adding key bindings to menu items that don't have keyboard shortcuts. This is a macOS feature (either globally or per app) and doesn’t need a separate app. For example, I have ⇧⌘M mapped to Window > Zoom (the inverse of Minimize). This is now hidden deep in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts button > App Shortcuts.

artdigital 3y ago

Been using it for a long time but found myself more and more using Shortcuts and HammerSpoon instead. Maybe a few very basic things that I still have in KM are stuff like “paste as keyboard strokes”, muting my audio when stuff changes and the occasionally keyboard shortcut remap (because it syncs across my machines in contrast to the macOS native thing) Curious what the people here use KM for. What are some of your use cases?

SloopJon 3y ago
I mainly use it for text expansion, which I find easier to remember and type than multi-key shortcuts. That part of my brain is already full of Emacs key bindings. I switched from TextExpander to Keyboard Maestro years ago. I have web-specific macros that basically act as cross-browser bookmarks. I have terminal-specific macros for the shell and other REPLs. I even have a macro for a VPN client that refuses to remember my username (over twenty characters, including a domain name).
theshrike79 3y ago
I tried to use HammerSpoon to do a simple window rearrangement (roll20 browser window to 3/4 width and discord video chat to 1/4). It takes like 10 seconds for it to do it...
- nchase 3y ago
  I wonder why. my hammerspoon window management stuff happens almost instantly

packetslave 3y ago

Keyboard Maestro is fantastic, and it's even better when combined with an Elgato StreamDeck. There's great integration for "run this KM macro" directly from a button (without eating up a keyboard shortcut), so I have 32 handy buttons on my StreamDeck XL for things like * open Obsidian and switch to my daily journal page" * type my password" (which reads securely from Keychain) * find the hamburger menu on the wiki, move the mouse to it, then select 'Translate to English" from the menu that pops up That last one is an example of one of Keyboard Maestro's superpowers: search for an image anywhere on screen, then take an action on it (move the mouse there, click it, etc.). Very very handy for automating things that can't easily be otherwise automated.

shmoogy 3y ago
I haven't felt the need to change from bettertouchtool to KBM but this... I don't think I can do via BTT type my password" (which reads securely from Keychain)
mleo 3y ago
StreamDeck and Keyboard Maestro are a great pair. w With KM’s ability to update the keys on StreamDeck I use it as dashboard for items in addition to actions. A key displays next upcoming meeting and changes color as it gets close. Another key shows the current VPN IP in case I need to target internal services back to my development instance. For Teams, I have button that toggles the resolution of second Studio Display to share desktop with lower resolution.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Do you need to use the Stream Deck's own software at all, then? I'm allergic to janky manufacturer-provided config apps (I'm looking at you, Logitech), and the Stream Deck app's screenshots aren't awe inspiring. I'm also uneasy about running a driver app in the background at all times to monitor which apps I'm using. That seems ripe for abuse, either by attackers who find a vulnerability in it or by the manufacturer ("hey, you seem to spend a lot of time in Drafts.app. Would you like to buy a JavaScript manual?").

cocacola1 3y ago

Don’t even know what’s inside and I know I’ll be upgrading. Such a timesaver.

dottjt 3y ago

I was actually going to make a post about software that you actually enjoy paying for and I was going to use Keyboard Maestro as one of those examples. Truly remarkable piece of software.

bernie_mann 3y ago
I barely read the v11 upgrade email when it hit my inbox and just renewed w/o a second thought. KM + Karabiner are the first thing I install on any new instance of macos.

iansinnott 3y ago

Keyboard Maestro is excellent. Makes automation on macOS way more fun, IMO. One nifty feature I haven't seen mentioned yet is that it can click on the screen based on OCR. So, if there's some UI element you want to interact with and you're not sure how to do it programmatically you can take a small screenshot of it and KM will use that to find the element on screen. Comes with useful visual debugging too. Also, I find it pairs well with a launcher application like Alfred or Raycast: - For Alfred: https://github.com/iansinnott/alfred-maestro https://github.com/iansinnott/alfred-maestro - For Raycast: https://www.raycast.com/eluce2/list-keyboard-maestro-macros https://www.raycast.com/eluce2/list-keyboard-maestro-macros

temende 3y ago

Easily one of the most useful and versatile Mac apps out there.

Tempest1981 3y ago

Could I use this to visit a website with a painful form, and paste in values from the columns of a CSV file, row by row?

kstrauser 3y ago
Yes. It's only limited by your creativity.
leejoramo 3y ago
The answer is most likely yes. I have done this many times. Some web forms make it very difficult. In which case you may have some places where you will need Keyboard Maestro to wait while you do some manual interactions. Still you can get most of the process automated
mvandermeulen 3y ago
Yes this is a particularly easy use case

jwr 3y ago

I've been using this for years and it's one of the most useful apps on my Mac. Highly recommended!

IggleSniggle 3y ago

I've been using BetterTouchTool ever since I got a Mac with a TouchBar that I wanted to make useful, and it has slowly taken over keyboard macros + gesture menus + multi-machine clipboard etc. Anybody here who has experience with both and might like to comment to compare them?

veidr 3y ago
They are both great, so I keep using both. There is a lot of overlap in terms of what they can do but they each have unique capabilities that the other can't do. I don't personally know all the differences. But for instance I use BTT to program my stream deck, while I use KM for my clipboard history because the built in GUI is polished.
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  This is me to a tee. I use both but for different things. I’m sure I could just focus on one or the other but I use both for different things.
williamdclt 3y ago
I switched from KM to BTT, I think it was because of the touchbar programming functionalities that BTT had I think generally BTT is more powerful (although I’m sure KM has some USP), but tbh it’s quite buggy. It hangs multiple times a day for a minute or more, and the config UI has various bugs. I’ve been thinking of switching to Hammerspoon, but I cannot really be bothered these days

siva7 3y ago

This has to be one of the longest actively developed niche software products i'm aware of. I've been using it since school and now i'm a grown-up bearded man.

Eugeleo 3y ago

Everyone in the comments swems to be in love with KM. I wonder, what do you all use it for? It sounds like I’m missing out on a lot, but when I’m thinking about it, nothing in need of automation comes to mind. That is, except for opening a few common apps and window management. What am I missing?

wellthisisgreat 3y ago
I have a whole library of text snippets around various business needs or just some links / addresses I have to send often. Something like ;elevatorpitch Will insert an elevator pitch into the email
filmgirlcw 3y ago
So many things! Opening a specific location or app or whatever with one keystroke is great, but I often also use it to run automations/macros done in AppleScript or something else with just a few keystrokes. Extremely niche and nerdy example: Years ago, when I used to do a ton of iOS screenshot galleries for app reviews (this was when I was a tech journalist), I used a modified KM script from Federico Viticci and Gabe Weatherhead that would let me select a group of screenshots, resize them as two or three side-by-side with proper spacing between and then resize for the requirements of the CMS/website I worked for with a hot-key combo. I could even have it name the file a certain way and save it to a specific folder I had setup to auto-upload images to the CMS and then copy the image link so I could use it in my Markdown workflow that I’d cobbled together to do previewing of stuff before I put the raw HTML code in said CMS. That example was the result of like several different macros/scripts that I combined into a couple of key commands, depending on if I wanted to just do the image merging/resizing or the whole upload/copy link thing. I’m sure there could be other ways to do that, but none as seamless and intuitively as KM. It’s just a great tool. Even if you just use it for basic text expansion, it’s great - though I tend to use other tools for that — but the automation stuff is just top notch.

cocoadog 3y ago

I love the palette feature, which allows me to create shortcuts exactly two keystrokes long: https://www.notesfromandy.com/2014/08/01/double-hotkeys-with-keyboard-maestro/ https://www.notesfromandy.com/2014/08/01/double-hotkeys-with... This feature is just a sliver of all the power of Keyboard Maestro. I'm sure there are many potentially life-changing gems among the features I haven't yet explored.