
Keyboard Maestro 8.0 - mminer
http://www.stairways.com/press/2017-09-19
======
nikivi
This app is seriously amazing.

I recently wrote about how I use it together with Typinator to completely
automate writing text :

[https://medium.com/@NikitaVoloboev/write-once-never-write-
ag...](https://medium.com/@NikitaVoloboev/write-once-never-write-
again-c2fa1f6c4e8)

There is also a video in the end where it shows all of its powers in action.

And I share all the interesting Keyboard Maestro macros I use in a list here :

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/km-
macros](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/km-macros)

~~~
mhd
A shortcut for "this"? Don't you spend too much time triggering shortcuts and
looking up the letter from the palettes than actually touch typing some of the
words?

------
ronyeh
Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool have been my favorite Mac utilities for
many years.

One tiny example: I use hidutil + Keyboard Maestro to map my Caps Lock key to
CMD+Tab. I found that constantly hitting CMD+Tab throughout the day caused me
some wrist strain.

So instead, I now map my Caps Lock to Keypad 0 using hidutil. And then I use
Keyboard Maestro to invoke CMD+Tab everytime Keypad 0 occurs. So now, CMD+Tab
is just a single keystroke. It's a small win, but it's something that I do
many many times per day.

A second example: I use 1Password, but _sometimes_ some apps or sites DO NOT
allow me to paste my password. Ugh. So I use a Keyboard Maestro macro to type
out my copied password. Now that I think of it, I hope they're not stealing
all my passwords! ;-)

~~~
dvcrn
> A second example: I use 1Password, but sometimes some apps or sites DO NOT
> allow me to paste my password. Ugh. So I use a Keyboard Maestro macro to
> type out my copied password. Now that I think of it, I hope they're not
> stealing all my passwords! ;-)

This is something I haven't thought of! Thanks a lot for the tip!

~~~
ronyeh
Here's my macro:

[https://i.imgur.com/zkaxakJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/zkaxakJ.png)

It just types out whatever is in my clipboard. I use it for copying and
inserting credit card numbers and passwords, since some sites don't allow you
to paste into those text fields.

------
strayamaaate
Quite surprised to see Perth, Western Australia. I was wondering if there were
any developers left in my home town, the (now second) most isolated city in
the world.

Kudos to the team on the release.

[http://blog.id.com.au/2012/population/population-
trends/is-p...](http://blog.id.com.au/2012/population/population-trends/is-
perth-the-most-remote-city-in-the-world/)

~~~
mmjaa
I too am from Perth and am also often amused to hear of any form of software
development industry in our home town .. but it has to be said that Perth can
produce some very interesting technology outliers at times. Just look at whats
happening with 3D-printing in Perth, for example (AuroraLabs) .. some truly
innovative folks still living there.

~~~
Nursie
IBM have a development team there in Hay St, I used to work with them, a few
years back. There's software development going on at the RAC too, a variety of
mining related software companies and ... I thin kthere was something about
video surveillance cams for public transport. Oh and a couple of ISPs,
probably not developing much.

That's about all I remember encountering from my time living in Perth.

------
TheAceOfHearts
Lots of people are saying how they love this app. I'd be interested in reading
examples of how people are using it.

I wish the author provided the source code, even if they continued charging
money. Based on the functionality I'm guessing it'll require enabling
accessibility, which means it can essentially hijack your computer. I've been
slowly whittling down my usage of closed-source third-party apps in order to
reduce my effective "circle of trust" and reduce the chances of being subject
to attacks. Why are commercial open source apps so uncommon? Textual is an
example of one such app, but I can't think of many others.

~~~
thothamon
In practice, if something was truly open-source, there'd be nothing to prevent
someone who didn't like you from building your app with each new release and
putting on a web site for anyone to download for free. You might be the kind
of guy who would pay $40 for good software, but a lot of people would get the
free version and not pay. This is the eternal conundrum of open source.

Here's a modified idea, perhaps still not good enough but hopefully a step
down the path. When you purchase the product, you receive access to the source
code for the version that was then-current one year ago. Granted, you are not
sure the current code doesn't have malware. But you can be confident, based on
the history of the product, that it did not have malware for a long time. (And
were you really going to scan the diffs for each release for malware anyway?)
You could also allow trusted third-parties under NDA to review all diffs for
the current code base and certify that they didn't see anything malicious.

This also ensures that should your company disappear, at the very worst, the
user community will have a not-too-old version of the software to fall back
on.

------
pacomerh
This app is so good, I use it to automate project workflows in iterm2.
Something like, open terminal -> create tabs -> switch folders -> run
services, etc. Also, remaping keystrokes to create macros and using hjkl as
arrows.

------
submeta
Just downloaded it, gave it a try, and already in love with it! Will
definitely buy it later today.

What I did with it: Automated searching a project name in an app called
Todoist where I have to hit slash to go to the search field, enter a `#` sign
as a prefix for project names, hit the down arrow key to select the project
name that is suggested and finally hit enter key. This'll go right to that
project. Now I hit a hotkey, enter a partial name for the project and enter.
It'll open Todoist or put focus on it and open the appropriate project.

It was super easy to create the macro.

------
thothamon
Keyboard Maestro is one of the most underrated apps for power users. I had it
for a long time and finally began to realize what amazing power you get with
this tool. Others also mentioned BetterTouchTool. With that and Keyboard
Maestro, if you have that little thing you wish an app would allow you to do,
most of the time you can do it by using these two tools.

As Ferris Beuller said, if you have the means (and almost all of you do), I
highly recommend it.

------
yasserkaddour
Interesting app is there an alternative for linux?

~~~
rakete
AutoHotKey was already mentioned, which I use on windows. I have been looking
for an alternative that I can also use on Linux and Mac OS and found SikuliX
([http://www.sikulix.com/](http://www.sikulix.com/)). Note that I have no idea
if either AutoHotKey or SikuliX are actually capable of replicating the
functionality of Keyboard Maestro since I've never used Keyboard Maestro.

Also recently I found a cross platform automation system written in go that
looks promising: robotgo ([https://github.com/go-
vgo/robotgo](https://github.com/go-vgo/robotgo)). I might try to use robotgo
to replace the AutoHotKey scripts in my own little Unity3D command line tool
unity_do
([https://github.com/rakete/unity_do](https://github.com/rakete/unity_do)) in
the future. So I don't have any experience with it yet.

------
daemonk
I really want to get into these types of apps as I think it will greatly
improve my work speed. But I am always afraid of becoming over-dependent on
these tools. I commonly change environments in my work, so I often have to
adapt to new systems.

If these tools are somehow portable via usb/internet sync, I think I would
start to use them more.

~~~
mercer
Keyboard Maestro has a sync option, but of course you'd still be reliant on a
mac.

------
blunte
I have this, and I do believe what people say about how powerful it is.
However, I find the UI to be very alien and very unlike any other software I
have used (especially on Mac).

~~~
wingerlang
How so? It's essentially trying (and, IMO, succeeding) to make coding drag and
droppable. While some things can be a bit difficult to get going, overall it
works extremely well I think.

~~~
blunte
First and foremost, the state indicators are very confusing.

For example, when you create a new macro, the macro editor shows a button to
the right of the name that is either a check or an X. If you click the check
(which would mean what, anyway?), it switches to an X. Did you just complete
some action by "checking" it? Apparently, clicking the Check button _disables_
the macro. Clicking the X enables the macro. To me that seems backwards, but
either way it's a very poor state indicator+driver.

Then you have inconsistent behaviors of the + buttons. In the Groups and
Macros columns, their + buttons add a new element. But in the macro editor,
the + button causes an action panel to slide up over the Groups and Macros
sections. So + doesn't add a macro step, it just shows you the things you can
select from (and drag) to build the macro.

Now, the - (minus) button on the macro panel... it doesn't remove the panel
that the + just popped up; it deletes the current macro action. To remove the
panel, you have to click the grayed out + button.

And when you're done adding a macro action, should you click the check button
on the bottom? Apparently not; that toggles the last action on or off.

Ok, so you've got an action. Want to add another action? If the panel with all
the available actions is open, can you drag one down below your last action
(repeating the same behavior you followed to add the first action? Nope. You
have to click that grayed out + button to remove the actions panel. Then a new
button appears below the last aciton - "\+ New Action". Click that, and the
action selection panel slides up again. Drag another action down to the macro
panel and ... oops! That doesn't work!? But that's how we got the first action
there, and we just clicked "\+ New Action" (and it showed us the action
choices). Ahh, this time you must double click the action you want - not drag
it. Now it appears in the macro actions window.

The UI is a wreck. The app is great, but the UI seems like another entry here:
[https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/6/9/15768800/reddit-
worst...](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/6/9/15768800/reddit-worst-volume-
sliders-ui-design)

~~~
mthoms
I'll have to agree with you here. The UI needs some serious work. You will get
used to it's quirks after a while though.

Even with that major flaw, it's probably the best "bang for the buck" software
I've ever owned. Period.

Edit: And.. as mentioned elsewhere - the support truly _is_ fantastic. You can
tell the developer is really passionate about this project.

------
arvinsim
I bought this app but was never able to unlock its potential.

All the tutorials that I read seem to be too complicated.

Anyone can point to easy to understand tutorials for creating workflows?

~~~
jannes
I seem to remember that Macstories has a few good tutorials:
[https://www.macstories.net/tag/keyboard-
maestro/](https://www.macstories.net/tag/keyboard-maestro/)

------
brunorsini
I absolutely love this app too.

And for the record their support is _amazing_ , very knowledgeable and
responsive.

------
aldanor
I use it quite often to type in unicode characters like ⌘, or music
sharp/flats, etc.

