How to Automatically Open an Application On a Second Monitor

1. Create a new macro, and select Trigger by application. Choose the application you want to open on the second monitor.

2. Click on the “Interface Control” folder. Add “Manipulate a Window” to macro.

3. Click on the “Scale size by” drop-down and select any of the preset sizes under “Move and Resize”

4. Click on “Move and Resize” and select “Center at”.

5. Change the coordinates in the two fields to the following.

Test your macro to see if it works. The application window should move to the center of the second monitor, when it’s activated.

How To Click A Button On A Web Page Without Using the Mouse

Mac automation makes me lazy, because that’s what computers should do. They should reduce the steps we have to take to get things done. For instance, nearly every other day I have to enter some data in a text box, and then hit the save button. It only takes about 15 seconds to complete the task, but why should I have to move my hands off the keyboard to click the Save button?

Well not anymore. With a Keyboard Maestro macro, I can click the Save button by typing three letters. Here’s how the macro looks:

I first tried using the Click Safari Link action, but it didn’t work. So I turned to the Move and Click Action. I took a screenshot of the Save button, and then I changed the “relative to the” part of the action to “found image’s center.” And then I dropped the Save screen shot into the image box.

I assigned a string trigger to the action, and now when I type “svv” (which immediately disappears) after inputting text, KM clicks the Save button for me, reducing one little annoying step I need to take.

I use this action setup to click other buttons in my daily workflow. It’s a nice little time saver.

Use Keyboard Maestro to Highlight Text

In Apple’s Preview, you probably know that you can use the application’s annotation tools to highlight text in PDF. But for most other applications, there’s no annotation tools to do the job. In TextEdit and the Notes app, you can use the Format feature to change the font style color of text, and use that has a highlighter, but the process is requires too many steps.

But if you’re a Keyboard Maestro user, you can create a couple of highlighter macros for applying a color style or highlighter to text in nearly any text-based application.

Red Strikethrough Macro in Macro Library

Keyboard Maestro contains a Macro Library (Windows > Macro Library)  with dozens of extra macros that you can add to your macro library. In the Text folder, there’s a Red Strikethrough macro, which will change selected text to Red with a strikethrough. Insert that macro into your library, and you can quickly see how the workflow works.

Red Strikethrough

The above screenshot is what the Red Strikethrough looks like. If for some reason it’s not in your Macro Library, you can simply create it by adding the steps above. But notice you can change this macro and use other types of styles. I don’t have much use for a red strikethrough, but I do like highlighting text so that I can review a document for important details.

Highlighting Text

Red Highlighter

I wanted way to highlight text, so I duplicated the Red Strikethrough macro a couple of times and made changes the settings, so that I could have a three different macros–a green highlighter, a red highlighter, and a yellow background highlighter.

The Yellow Highlighter

To create the yellow highlighter, I simply unchecked the Foreground color and enabled the Background color, and selected yellow.

If you found this macro useful let me know. And if you similar ideas for macros, please share them.

How to Create an Automatic Email Template To Use in Keyboard Maestro

“Bakari, can you share the KM workflow for creating an email template with select email addresses, etc.?”

Thanks for asking, Brian. Unfortuneately, KM alone doesn’t handle email templates as well as say Automator. But thankfully KM can trigger Automator workflows. So here’s the steps to do that.

Create New Workflow in Automator

Add a New Message Action

Set Up Your Email Template

Note: if you want to add different information to the template each time you send it, be sure to check “Show this action when the workflow runs.” You enable the workflow to show only selected items.

Save the Workflow in a Permenant Location

Note: KM Automator workflows, not Automator Applications. So be sure to save your workflow in a folder where KM can find it.

Create a New Macro in Keyboard Maestro

Add the “Execute an Automator Workflow” action to the macro, and then attach the Automator workflow file you just created. Give your macro a name and trigger, and you’re good to go. You will probably only want your macro to run in Mail, so create add to your Mail macros folder.

Let me know how this setup works for you.

How to Use Named Clipboards in Keyboard Maestro

This tutorial is about Named Clipboards in Keyboard Maestro. But first I’m going to briefly describe the difference between the Mac’s systemwide clipboard, and the basic clipboard feature in Keyboard Maestro.

Just as your Mac has a systemwided clipboard, Keyboard Maestro also has a global clipobard. KM however can save a history of everything you copy on your Mac, whereas the Mac’s clipboard only saves one clipping at a time. Each time you copy something new on your Mac, it replaces the previous copied item on the clipboard. But with Keyboard Maestro, it saves a copy of each new clipping you make. (Note: the Saved Clipboard History is not by default enabled in KM. So you will need to enable it in Preferences > General > Save Clipboard History.

The screenshot below shows KM’s Clipboard History Switcher. The keyboard shortcut Command-Control-Shift-V will bring up the switcher. If you find that keyboard shortcut a little awkward you can change the hot key assigned to it. The name of the macro is Activate Clipboard History Switcher. If you don’t find it in the Clipboard Macros folder, just do a search for it in KM.

With the Clipboard History Switcher, you can of course paste clippings on the list into any application. Notice you can also star individual clippings as favorites. Starred clippings will remain in the history. You can also send selected clippings to another Mac that has KM installed, but I’ll cover that in another tutorial.

Now let’s move on to Named Clipboards.

Clipboard History Switcher Window

Note: The Clipboard History Switcher captures text and image clippings, as shown above.

Overview of Named Clipboards

The Named Clipboards feature in KM allows you how to create as many clipboards as you like, but unlike the Clipboard History Switcher, Named Clipboards only retain one clipping at a time. Each time you copy a new clipping to a Named Clipboard, it replaces the previous clipping. At first that might not sound very useful, but when you learn how to use Named Clipboards you’ll see how they can be used in actions and macros.

So a way to think about Named Clipboards is that they are temporary or permenant ways to hold clippings, including text or images. Named Clipboards can be activated by any of the KM’s triggers, including hot keys. Named Clipboards work similarly to clipboard managers such as TextExpander. I find TextExpander more useful for storing hundreds of regularly used snippets that I frequently use while writing, whereas I use Named Clipboards for special automations.

To get a good idea of how Named Clipboards work, let’s create one.

Step 1: Create a New Macro. Add “Copy to Named Clipboard”

Click on the “Default Clipboard” drop-down button of items, and selecte “New”.

Step 2: Type “Temporary” in the Named Clipboard field.

Note: whatever is already on your Mac’s systemwide clipboard will appear in the Named Clipboard box. Ignore that for now. So essentially you have created your first Named Clipboard, which gets listed in the Clipboards section of KM’s Preferences. You can add as many clipboards as you like.

Notice also that you can add Named Clipboards in the Clipboards section (click the + button, and then type or paste whatever text you want to permenantly remain there. For instance, you can create a Named Clipboard for a boilerplate letter, another one for your business address, and perhaps one for your Facebook URL. Each of Named Clipboard can be assigned a unique trigger and can be used like any other macro action.

Step 3: Add a Trigger and name for the macro.

Now you can use this macro to copy snippets directey to your Temporary clipboard. The snippet will also get copied to your Mac’s systemwide clipboard, as well as KM’s Clipboard History. However, until you copy a different item (snippet of text or image) to the Temporary Clipboard, the item you last copied to it will remain there.

In addition to copying text to the named clipboard, you can open the clipboard in Preferences and manually type what you want to store and paste. But since this is a Temporary clipboard you probably will use it to just store a piece of copied text temporarly.

Now let’s create a macro to paste whatever is on your Temporary clipboard.

Step 4: Create a new macro and add “Paste From Named Clipboard” Action.

Change Default Clipboard name to “Temporary”—the name you used for the Named Clipboard. Give the macro a name and a Trigger. Now you can paste whatever is on your Temporary clipboard into any application.

Advanced Named Clipboard Actions

Named Clipboards can be used in other macros and actions. In the next step we will create an action that briefly displays what’s on your Temporary clipboard.

Step 5: Create a new macro and add the “Display Text” action.

1) Where it says, “Insert Token”, select “Named Clipboard” from the drop-down menu. 2) Change the “Default Clipboard” to “Temporary”. Give your macro a name and Trigger. 3) Click the View button in the action to quickly see if the action works. A text box with the copied item currently in your Temporary clipboard should display for about five seconds. Note: You can change Display text briefly in the action to another type of action, such Display text in a window.

For another example of how to use Named Clipboards in a macro, see my tutorial on Create a Paste Current URL Macro.

Please let me know what you think of this tutorial. If you found any part confusing, just drop me a line and let me know.

Create a Paste Current URL Macro

The following steps below will show you how to set up a Keyboard Maestro macro action that pastes the current Safari URL from within any application. This macro saves you from having to select and copy a URL. Safari does not have to be the forefront application in order to use this macro. Just make sure that the URL you want to paste is the current visiable tab in Safari.

Note: This macro action replaces the previous action I outlined over a year ago about how to use KM to get links into MarsEdit. The screenshot below is how the macro will look when you have created it.

Keyboard Maestro Editor

Step 1: Create a new macro and add the Set Clipboard to Text action to the editor.

Step 2: Click on System Clipboard and select New… from the drop-down menu. Type and add Linked URL or any name you want to give it.

Step 3: Type the code you see in the screenshot below or select it under Insert Token.

Step 4: Add the action, Paste from Named Clipboard

Step 5: Change the Default Clipboard to the “Linked URL” you created in step 2.

Step 6: Give the macro a title and assign a hot key trigger.

Now you’re set. You can paste the URL of the current Safari tab into any application.

Using Keyboard Maestro to Insert Titles and URLs in MarsEdit

The following macro copies the selected title of an article and then switches to MarsEdit and pastes the title. It then switches back to Safari and copies the URL for the article, and finally switches back to MarsEdit to add the link. This macro does exactly what you would do manually, but it does it with a simply keyboard shortcut trigger. I tried using Keyboard Maestro’s Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard action to reduce the switching back and forth between apps, but that macro didn’t work consistently.

You can see a video of how it works, here. I slowed the maco action down some so you can better see how it’s done.

One Click Pause, Play and Hide

When I listen to my favorite music streaming site, Rdio.com, I typically have to pause what is playing in its Mac desktop player in order to answer the phone or when I’m dictating an article, as I’m doing now using Dragon Dictate. In order to save myself a few clicks in order to pause or play Rdio, as well as to automatically hide it, I created two little click-saving macros using Keyboard Maestro.

One Click Pause and Play

To pause or play music in Rdio, I set up a macro that activates these menu items when I click on the Rdio icon in my Dock and brings the application briefly to the front. If music is playing, the macro pauses it; and if not, it resumes play.

The macro is triggered by the Application trigger, which executes a keystroke simulation—in this case, the Spacebar key.

Automatic Hide

To save yet another click or keyboard shortcut, I use a macro that automatically hides a designated application when it is no longer in the forefront. So in this case, when I click away from Rdio, this macro will hide it after 15 seconds.

This macro is triggered by the Application trigger, which executes a 15 second pause action, followed by a “If Conditions Met Execute Actions,” and an AppleScript action.

You cut-and-paste the AppleScript script below, be sure to replace the name of the application in the script with the one you’re building the script for.

tell application “System Events”
set visible of process “Rdio” to false
end tell

How to Think About Automation Workflows

Right after I post my last blog about creating a droplet using Keyboard Maestro, I discovered an article via Twitter posted on site called A Better Mess.

The writer, Micheal Schetcher, wrote a review of Keyboard Maestro and how he uses it. In that article he includes the idea behind workflows. He says:

Any geek, especially those who dabble in the productivity space, tend to think in workflows. We examine how we do the things that we do. This is usually a three-step process: (1) consider your work, (2) define the most efficient steps to accomplish it and (3) automate the hell out of it. Simply put, Keyboard Maestro removes friction and reduces the steps needed to really get things done. There are several ways to accomplish this.

Touché, Micheal. I was just thinking something similar about workflow, which is I also what I  use even in non-computer tasks like cooking or organizing my messy office. Micheal is so on point about automating the “hell out of” what we do repeatedly on the computer. Programs like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Automator, AppleScript, TextExpander, Typinator, and the like can save us so much damn time when it comes to performing redundant tasks.

I always observe what I’m doing and how often I do it. Then I try to automate as many parts of that task as possible. Each time I perform the task, I think about how I can refine the workflow to make it easier and more efficient.

Before I switched over to Keyboard Maestro, I created over two hundred macros in QuicKeys for nearly everything I do on my Mac. I didn’t of course use them all everyday, but when I needed to perform certain tasks, especially ones I hadn’t performed in a while, a macro I previously created for a task could be triggered and ran, saving me lots of clicking and even remembering keyboard shortcuts. Now I do the same using Keyboard Maestro.

I also use the Status Menu Trigger in Keyboard Maestro to bookmark files, website pages, and other apps related to an application I’m working in. So for example when I create a how-to video using ScreenFlow, I have a KM macro that launches my YouTube account for Mac automation videos. The macro is present in the Status Menu of Keyboard Maestro when I have ScreenFlow as the frontmost application. I don’t use my Mac automation YouTube account a lot, but bookmarking it in KM makes it easy to access, which is typically  when I’m working in ScreenFlow.

So yeah, thanks Micheal for your brief description of how to think about workflow—the best way to be more productive on your computer.

QuicKeys Developer Explains Lack of Lion Support [News]

Wow, just learned today why Startly, the company behind the Mac automation program, QuicKeys, has been relatively silent about the long overdue Lion update for their program.

Unfortunately many long users of QuicKeys, including myself, have jumped ship and started using Keyboard Maestro because there was not much coming from Startly about why they had not updated QuicKeys.

Essentially the programmer responsible for the update passed away, but Startly was not kept up to date about the programmer’s fatal illness. The company is now seeking a qualified programmer who can complete the job. You can read more about here.

This is good and bad news for QuicKeys users who have switched over to Keyboard Maestro. I still think both programs are very good for general Mac users who want to automate tasks on their computer, but it’s time consuming to develop macros in both applications, and it has taken too long for QuicKeys to be updated for Lion. I can barely open and use it Lion.

However, I think what I will try to continue to write articles and do how-to videos for both programs.

I will also try to write an article that explores the differences between the programs.