{"id":23222,"date":"2021-03-14T14:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=23222"},"modified":"2021-03-14T14:14:15","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T21:14:15","slug":"keyboard-maestro-showtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/keyboard-maestro-showtime\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s Showtime!\u201d \u2013 Brought to You by Keyboard Maestro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since Mike Price started working on how to automate the creation of chapter marks into the podcast<\/a> using Keyboard Maestro<\/a>, I\u2019ve been taking baby steps to do things with this amazing macro tool myself. I am definitely still on the bunny slope with the tool, but I feel like I’m starting to get how it can help me. I\u2019d like to tell you about a few of the automations I’ve been working on with this fully-accessible macro tool.<\/p>\n

Recently Jay Miller in our Slack<\/a> posted a very fun invitation to the community. He wrote:<\/p>\n

\n Wrote a couple blog posts around working with text in Keyboard Maestro – This seems like the kinda folks that may have Keyboard Maestro needs and I have a couple days off so if you have any requests on how to do things just DM me. (Background, I’m a Mac Automator and Developer)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I immediately wrote back, \u201cYou\u2019ve unleashed a monster. I\u2019ll get my list ready.\u201d And I did. The first thing I wanted help with was a tiny, minor annoyance but those paper cuts get to you if they go on too long.<\/p>\n

Preview \u2013 Show Markup Toolbar<\/h2>\n
\"Show
Show Markup Toolbar in Preview Macro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just last week I walked you through all of the cool markup tools in Preview<\/a>. I use these all day long. The paper cut problem is that by default, Preview opens up with the Markup Toolbar closed. I asked Jay if he could help me make a macro to have it open automatically whenever a Preview was active. He and I went back and forth a bunch in an open Slack conversation but after a while, we figured we were just annoying everyone so we kept at it one on one for a while. He gave me a big boost (pointing out that there\u2019s a keyboard shortcut of command-shift-A to open the Markup Toolbar 🤦🏼‍♀️) and doing a lot of the early heavy lifting.<\/p>\n

The basis of his idea was to have Keyboard Maestro look to see the status of the button for showing the Markup Toolbar. If it was greyed out, that meant the toolbar wasn\u2019t visible, so it would trigger the keyboard shortcut. After we got that working, I discovered another problem. If the window was too narrow, the Show Markup Toolbar icon wasn\u2019t visible at all so the macro wouldn\u2019t trigger. All by my lonesome, I figured out how to get Keyboard Maestro to measure the width of the window and resize it to the minimum width for the icon to show. I was very pleased with my little self.<\/p>\n

My blind side as a developer though is that I don\u2019t immediately think of all the ways something can go wrong, which is an essential part of making sure there are not unintended consequences. After I enabled my snazzy new macro, I started having all sorts of bizarre behaviors on my Mac. The weirdest one was that I couldn\u2019t rename anything on my server when using the FTP client Transmit. As soon as I hit Enter on a file name, which should have turned it blue so I could type over the name, it would deselect the item and the window would kind of giggle.<\/p>\n

The good news is that I\u2019d just enabled the macro so I quickly guessed it might be the culprit. Disabling my macro allowed Transmit to operate normally. I figured out how to get my Keyboard Maestro macro to only work when Preview is in front and now my precious Markup Toolbar is always visible.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve done any work at all in Keyboard Maestro, you know that this is a tiny little macro that\u2019s not very powerful, but I still felt like I made fire when I built it, with Jay as my fire starter!<\/p>\n

Live Show<\/h2>\n

That spark is what leads me to my slightly more complex and super useful pair of macros that I wrote all by myself. A long time ago I wrote an Automator script to launch all of my applications I need to run the live show. I wrote a second one that closes the applications for the live show. The script works, but there are things it doesn\u2019t do or doesn\u2019t do well. It\u2019s really scope creep from the original problem to be solved, but once you get something automated, you start thinking about refinements and improvements as you use the automation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also concerned that at any moment Apple is going to abandon Automator and instead give us Shortcuts on the Mac. In the meantime, Keyboard Maestro is independent of Apple\u2019s decisions in this space so I’m embracing it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s review the full set of requirements I have for my live show macros as they stand today:<\/p>\n