Here is an example application dock which shows a number of Keyboard Maestro facilities.
Right at the start, let me say that it is tedious to set up - generally, it is probably better to use DragThing.
It consists of a macro group shown as a palette:
Each macro has to be configured with the icon, and actions to launch or quit the application.
There is also another macro that is globally active that watches any application launch or quit and adjusts the marking of the macros so you can see at a glance which ones are running. This is also tedious to setup with an action for each application.
It works, and I use it all the time, but whether it is a good idea or not, well that is another story altogether.
Peter, that is a great looking app dock, and I'm sure your macro will serve as a great example to those that want such a tool.
Having said that, I would encourage anyone interested in making it easy to launch apps, to try the two basic tools that are immediately available on every Mac:
The Mac Dock, which is easy to customize
Mac Spotlight
Very quick, easy to use
All you need to remember is a few characters in the App Name
Type âSPACE to trigger Spotlight, and just type a few characters of the App Name
The apps you use the most, appear first
In most cases after I type a few characters, I can just hit RETURN
Of course, this won't meet the needs of everyone, but the setup is very minimal, and easy to try.
I put the apps I use the most on the Mac Dock, docked to the bottom of the screen, and hidden, so all it takes to display is quick sweep of my mouse to the bottom of the screen.
Apps I don't use that much, I remove, to remove clutter. An exception to that, is one or two apps that I occasionally use, but can't remember the name, whereas their icon is easy to remember. I also set the "Applications" folder in the dock to display alphabetically, as a list, making it very easy to browse the App list if I can't remember the App name.
But if you need more, Keyboard Maestro can most likely provide what you need.
I prefer Launchpad which can be opened with Ctrl+alt+Cmd+L then type the first few letters of the application you want. I also one of my screen corners set to open Launchpad.
To that I'll add that it's even more customizable with a tool like cDock.
I used to put my apps (aliases to the apps, actually) into Dock folders for type of (e.g. Design, ePublishing, Communication, System, etc.). Now, I just launch everything from Spotlight. The only things in my Dock are utilities like ImageOptim that I use primarily as drag-and-drop targets.
I too am a Launchpad user. I get more mileage out of it by trimming down the things I have Spotlight search for. So I search for apps with Launchpad and documents and folders with Spotlight by turning off the other items, such as the Applications Folder, in Spotlight's preferences.
So are the checkmarked apps the ones that are active?
I think if it's something you can use and setup that's not dependent on an App like Dragthing then it is a good idea. It keeps the software budget slim and trim. [quote="peternlewis, post:1, topic:4747"]
Each macro has to be configured with the icon, and actions to launch or quit the application.
[/quote] So are the icons copied into the macro listing? I am not following. And why do you need an action to quit? Can't you just quit the app?
I hadnât thought of using Spotlight to launch applications. After using it a few times now itâs definitely something to add to my armoury, along with the use of TextWrangler and other useful tips I keep picking up on this forum.
Yes. That is what the Application Dock macro does, every time an application launches or quits it updates the marks on the macros.
The icons are selected with the icon chooser, which has a section for application icons (selected this way they use negligible space since they are just references to the application).
But a quick Google Image search will find you icons for your app. Then, just drag the icon image to a folder or your desktop, then drag it into the icon portion of the macro.
Don't feel bad. I did the same thing for at least a couple of years.
In fact, I way underutilized Spotlight until the last year.
Now, I must use it a hundred times a day, or more.
Here's a trick I Learned a few months ago:
I often need to paste a small image into a KM forum post
It's a small "updated" flag in yellow.
I learned I can type "updated" in Spotlight, and it finds the image file.
I can then just drag the file, from the Spotlight window, directly into KM.
Another tip: Put text tags in your script files as comment lines, in the form of "@TagName"
You can then use Spotlight to quickly find these files.
The more I use Spotlight, the more uses I find for it.
The icons are the icons of the applications that Keyboard Maestro finds on your harddisk.
The ones with the "no entry" sign () usually mean they are too old to run on your Mac (perhaps PowerPC or the like). The ones with a generic application icon might just have no icon at all. And so on.
Finding them on your harddisk is left as an exercise, though if you use the icon (from the Icon Chooser) and export the macro, and look at the XML, you should be able to find the bundle ID or some such of the application. Possibly.
If you give it a try, take your time to explore it, because it has many, many features and details.
Your best friend will probably be the Help documentation. (Still not updated for ver 6, but most of the info is still valid.)
No, nothing that comes to my mind at the moment. With the exception being the mentioned ClipboardMerge feature, which is triggered when you (or a KM macro) rapidly presses 2ĂâC. But you can disable that.
Of course you have to take care that your LB shortcuts donât overlap with any KM triggers. But this shouldnât be too hard:
Yes I think you should. When I first tried it years ago I bought it immediately on the spot. It's so powerful and you could spend months on the manual and still only scratch the surface. In addition in my case Pro Tools uses COMMAND+SPACE BAR for to start recording so it makes a nice replacement for finding things on my DAW.
) usually mean they are too old to run on your Mac (perhaps PowerPC or the like). The ones with a generic application icon might just have no icon at all. And so on.
