Action "Start Screen Saver" not working

Questions & Suggestions
1

Keyboard Maestro 10.1.1 In Monterey, last update, on a MacBook 16, I found this problem. Any suggestion? Thanks.

2

The action is the trivial AppleScript:

delay 1
tell application "System Events" to start current screen saver

Unfortunately, Apple being Apple, the current screen saver doesn't always work, and instead returns:

screen saver "" of application "System Events"

You can go to your System Preferences, and change your screen saver, and it may then start working. But I note on my Mac, not all screen avers are even listed via AppleScript, only these ones are:

  • Random
  • Word of the Day
  • Arabesque
  • Hello
  • Flurry
  • Monterey
  • Drift
  • Shell
  • Album Artwork
  • FloatingMessage

So you can run an AppleScript like:

delay 1
tell application "System Events" to start screen saver "Random"

And that will work.

And maybe one day Apple will make this all work. Probably not in the next version of macOS, since they are changing System Preferences entirely and so the number of bugs in it will likely be huge, if it even supports AppleScript, we'll have to see.

2 Likes
3

Thank you Peter!

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