Activate Last/Next Application hot keys conflict with web browsers

Macro Library
1

Within minutes of launching Keyboard Maestro for the first time, Safari started behaving strangely: I’d press the keyboard short for “Show Next Tab,” and the Skitch app would take control.

After checking to see what might have changed with Skitch’s activation keys, I realized Keyboard Maestro might be responsible. I quickly discovered the problem: the default hot keys for Keyboard Maestro’s “Activate Last Application” and “Activate Next Application” macros supersede Safari’s keyboard shortcuts for “Show Previous Tab” and “Show Next Tab.”

Checking a little further, I found the same conflict with the tab selection shortcuts in Firefox and Chrome browsers.

I see several ways this conflict could be avoided for new Keyboard Maestro users:

  1. Choose Activate Application hot keys that do not conflict with mainstream OS X applications.

  2. Deactivate the macros by default.

  3. Eliminate the macros because they duplicate the function of OS X’s Command+Tab application switching.

2

I just checked and they are not created by default any more. I presume at some point in the past (maybe distant past) you ran some version of Keyboard Maestro and those macros were created then. They were created by default in older versions of Keyboard Maestro predating the Macro Library (and quite possibly predating Safari’s Tabbed browsing, but that’s a separate concern).

The default macros currently are only:

  • Activate Application Launcher
  • Activate Application Switcher
  • Activate Clipboard Copy Switcher
  • Activate Clipboard Cut Switcher
  • Activate Clipboard History Switcher
  • Activate Clipboard Paste Switcher
  • Activate Window Switcher
  • Paste Selection Into Last Application
  • Quick Macro for ⌥F1
  • Search the Web
  • Trigger Macro by Name

The rest appear in the Macro Library but are no longer installed by default.

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