One of my favourite applications that I use to significantly ease my time using my mac is Keyboard Maestro. This app is essentially an IDE for automation.
It's a wonderful tool that allows you to create very powerful macros that can range from simply pasting some text, to moving the mouse pointer to some location, to doing various calculations with the input you provide and lot lot more.
I wrote about how I manage my huge macro library here.
All the macros/palettes are attached to this GitHub repository sorted into appropriate folders and I describe some of these macros/palettes below. For others, you can simply clone this repo, import things and see what you like. I will be uploading essentially all the macros I use here.
All global macros will have no trigger as they are called with Applescript from Karabiner. Some macros will have a Usage comment in the beginning where I clarify how I personally use the macro. It looks like this:
A lot of these macros were made with great help from the Keyboard Maestro forum community.
Just to emphasize how much KM has impacted my life. My most used macro from all these macros I share is macro to open Safari browser which I've ran some 117,091 times since I made it.
I also love using Alfred Maestro workflow that lets me search through my entire KM library of actions to activate.
It is advised you install these KM plugins as they make using KM editor more pleasant.
- KMFAM - Favourite actions and macros - This plugin lets you save complex and non complex actions and macros. You can then search over these actions and macros to quickly add them.
Macros are little KM scripts that contain a series of actions. The macros can then be executed from a trigger, usually a hotkey.
In my case all the global macros I share (macros that can run no matter what application is currently active) have no trigger. This is because I can call these macros from Karabiner using this Applescript code:
tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine"
do script "g: Kill All Macros"
end tellWhere g: Kill All Macros is a macro name. Where g: is a prefix that stands for global.
Non global macros that are binded to an app will have a hotkey however. One thing to note is that the hotkey triggers are chosen with respect to my custom keyboard layout.
I have binded my control key to A key with Karabiner. My command key is E key and Command + Shift modifier is Q key. So pressing E key, holding it and after pressig F will trigger ⌘ + F hotkey. Therefore some bindings will only make sense in context of my own layout. For example ⌃ + W is easier to reach for me then ⌘ + D. Because a + w is nicer to press then e + d on my keyboard. Karabiner is one powerful abstraction that makes managing 1000+ macros easy.
Global macro groups can be found here.
The macro groups have a prefix like g: that is used to give a theme and context to the macros inside the group. All the macros inside the group start with that prefix. The global groups included are:
g: General- All my global macros that have no category.open: Applications- Big list of macros that open applications. The cool thing about them is that they will open applications when triggered but if you are already in the application and run the macro it will bring you to last opened app.w: Open websites (Safari)- Open websites in Safari browser and switch to the websites if the URL is already open somewhere. (Credit to Christopher Stone)c: Open websites (Chrome)- Open websites in Chrome browser and switch to the websites if the URL is already open somewhere. (Credit to Christopher Stone)g: Text manipulation- Small macros that do text manipulation. Like uppercasing selected text or lowercasing it.
Application specific macro groups can be found here.
There are many macro groups inside the folder. These macros will only run in the application as specified by the name of the macro group.
Programming language macro groups can be found here.
This folder only contains one macro group Go: Insert. Because currently I mostly program in this language. The macro group contains some macros that insert some code I often tend to type in Go that I decided to automate. In my Karabiner, I have binded my . key to be a programming language specfic modifier. When in Go Karabiner mode, . + .. will run various macros from this group. An example macro may type log.println() when I press . + g and move my caret between the ().
I love using KM Palettes. A KM palette is a macro group that contains some actions inside. You give the palette a hotkey trigger and when you press the hotkey, a palette will show up, like this one:
The letters to the right will then activate the actions inside the palette. Similar to above macro groups, I have many Global palettes that I activate from Karabiner. I binded my Space key to be ⇧ + ⌃ + ⌥ modifier. This way I can open various palettes by holding Space and pressing different keys on my keyboard.
Global palettes can be found here.
All the palette groups start with t: prefix which indicates they are Global palettes. p: prefix would be more appropriate but the key is not placed as nicely as t on my keyboard and is harder to reach. The macros inside the palette don't start with a prefix.
One of the palettes included in there is t: KM groups (Palettes). This palette when activated looks like this:
It lists the global palettes I have made. When I activate any of the options, it quickly jumps to this palette group in the KM Editor so I can quickly edit and change it to my will. You can extend the groups to suit your own palettes by simply changing the macroGroupName variable in the code of the macros.
Application specific palettes can be found here.
These palettes all start with either tf: or ta: . The reason is that I have binded Space + a and Space + f to activate application specific palettes. I thus name the palettes appropriately to distinguish them from my Global palettes.
If you don't wish to clone the entire repository and load the macros this way. You can also individually load macros by going to the macro group/palette on GitHub itself.
For example if you want to download only w: Open websites (Safari) macro group found here. You would press View Raw button and then save it locally. When asked to save, mac will ask you if you want to append .txt extension to it. Say no. You can then open that specific macro group/palette from KM by simply double clicking the file.