Status Menu Trigger: The macro appears in, and can be selected from, Keyboard Maestro’s menubar app.Macro Palette Trigger: The macro appears in, and can be selected from, Keyboard Maestro’s floating Macro Palette which is itself accessed by a hot key.While Logged In Trigger: The macro triggers repeatedly every X seconds, minutes or hours while the user is logged in to the Mac.Time Trigger: The macro executes at a specific time.System Wake Trigger: The macro triggers when the Mac wakes from sleep.Engine Launch Trigger: The macro triggers when Keyboard Maestro launches.Login Trigger: The macro triggers when a user logs in.Application Trigger: The macro triggers based on specific app events like launching, quitting or running for a set period of time.
With the Tuts+ Example Macros group selected click the small plus icon beneath the Macros column to create a new macro. Set it to Available in all applications and Always activated. Creating MacrosĬreate a new Macro Group called Tuts+ Example Macros by clicking the small plus icon beneath the Groups pane. For example, you can create a group of Photoshop macros and a group of Google Chrome macros that use the same keyboard shortcuts so long as you configure the Macro Groups so that they don’t overlap. They also allow you to control which applications macros will be available in.
The Groups pane, the Macros pane and the Editor pane. The Keyboard Maestro Editor is where you create the macros and configure the triggers so they run when you want them to. To set it up, however, you need to use the Keyboard Maestro Editor. Once it’s running you’ll rarely interact with the app directly. Keyboard Maestro runs as a menubar app in the background.
When you install Keyboard Maestro you need to enable it in the Accessibility menu in the Privacy tab of the Security & Privacy preferences pane.
Keyboard Maestro comes with a 30-day fully featured free trial and once it’s over a license costs $36. You can download one from the developer’s website. Prerequisitesįor this tutorial you need a copy of Keyboard Maestro installed. In the following series of tutorials we’ll build on this and develop much more complex workflows. In this tutorial I’m going to start very simple and take you through the process of setting up a basic macro and trigger in Keyboard Maestro while explaining the features along the way. Before we start though, we need a base to work from.
You will gain a full understanding of what the app is capable of and the confidence to configure your own macros. Over the next few tutorials I’m going to dive deep into Keyboard Maestro and take any of the uncertainty out of using it. The onus is on you to work out, and develop, what you want it to do. Keyboard Maestro comes with almost no preconfigured macros. Configuring macros is simple once you know how, the hard part is developing them in the first place. Keyboard Maestro has a reputation for being difficult to set up and not holding your hand along the way.
The onus is on you to work out what you want Keyboard Maestro to do. The main selling point is that you can combine multiple different actions-such as opening a specific app, or number of apps, visiting a certain URL, triggering scripts and countless other things-into a single workflow that can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut or any number of other triggers. Like with other productivity apps such as Alfred or Launchbar, it’s difficult to give a concise definition of what the app does-it is endlessly customisable. Keyboard Maestro is a productivity and automation app that strings actions together to form macros.