Some Ways I Use Keyboard Maestro

Today, thanks to Michael Tsai, I found out there's a major new release of Keyboard Maestro. I use Keyboard Maestro all day long, and look forward to checking out the upgrade when I have time.

Here are some ways Keyboard Maestro makes my day go much more smoothly:

  • I use the palette feature to navigate to frequently used apps and documents in exactly two keystrokes.

  • I have a "Preferred Window Frame" macro that sets the active window's size and position. My preferred frame varies from app to app, and the macro does the right thing depending on which app is active. Just one keystroke to remember. The macro invokes keyboard shortcuts I've configured in Divvy, but I could also have entered window coordinates directly into Keyboard Maestro.

  • I map ^P/^N to UpArrow/DownArrow so I can use those emacs keys to go up and down in lists, menus, and other places outside of text editing. The ^P/^N keys already work in many apps, but not all, and not in all places within the same app. By setting up this global mapping, I don't have to remember where they work and where they don't.

  • You can create text expansion macros. I have macros for inserting date and time, for a few phrases I type on a regular basis, and for emoji characters. I was happy using Keyboard Maestro for all this but recently moved my text expansion macros to aText, a very nice app at a very reasonable price. My reasons for switching were minor and arguably not worth the time when I had a perfectly good solution. I wouldn't and perhaps shouldn't have bothered, except I am such an obsessive yak shaver.

  • I sometimes use Keyboard Maestro instead of System Preferences to provide alternate menu shortcuts. I do this because Keyboard Maestro syncs my macro definitions on Dropbox, which means that when I make a change, all my Macs automatically get it.

  • I open Xcode's Recent Files menu with one keystroke (I use ^R) instead of three (^1, DownArrow, RightArrow).

  • I have a scratch macro named "Pipe Text" that replaces the currently selected text by piping it through a shell script and pasting the result. The macro has an "Execute Shell Script" action that I edit to do what I have in mind, typically a grep.

  • I keep a personal log in the form of daily text files. I have a macro that opens today's log file in BBEdit, after creating the file if necessary. I use this throughout the day whenever I think of something to add to the file.

I'm happy to share how I do any of the above.

2 thoughts on “Some Ways I Use Keyboard Maestro

  1. Would love to know more about this:

    I have a macro that opens today’s log file in BBEdit, after creating the file if >necessary.

    Thank You.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.