I have RSI issues – particularly with my left little finger from using the shift key – and I've been using Keyboard Maestro for a few weeks now to implement as many hacks as possible to reduce putting my hands into awkward positions (mainly though avoiding using 'key chords').
I run macOS, which as far as I'm aware doesn't offer a system-wide auto capitalize feature. Does anyone know if it's possible to implement some form of auto capitalization using Keyboard Maestro?
If that's not possible then I was thinking of a solution along the lines of hitting any given letter key three times creating the relevant capital letter. I know how to do this for each individual key – by setting a macro that says (for example) 'when "sss" is typed, replace it with "S"' – but I was wondering if it is possible to create one macro that would apply to all letter keys (like 'when any letter key is typed three times in a row, replace it with the capitalised version of the letter key typed).
Any help in reducing my discomfort would be most appreciated! I'm just making up solution as I go, but what I've implemented so far hasn't proven enough to fix the problem. I think the ultimate solution is never to use key chords, but that's easier said than done.
I've noticed three curiosities in using this macro:
Within Evernote, it completely changes the formatting.
Within Google Sheets, it takes you out of 'typing mode' within the cell you're in (i.e., if you were to type another word, you'd overwrite what was already in the cell).
It takes a split second to process the macro, which means that if you're typing quickly, the order of the letters gets jumbled up.
Could anyone offer any solutions to one or more of the above?
You're playing very complicated games with disparate systems that aren't designed to work together, so of course there are bumps in the road. Some of these can be worked around by more sophisticated use of Keyboard Maestro – some can't.
Try the Typinator demo, and see if it does a better job with your text replacements.
It should, because it's purpose-built for that task – but no bets.
I use it myself instead of Keyboard Maestro for most text replacement operations.
Yep – adoption of that feature is app-specific (i.e., plenty of apps simply don't offer auto-capitalization), and it is often poorly and/or incompletely implemented in my experience.
I appreciate the suggestion @ccstone, but as far as I can tell, Typinator doesn't offer the solution I'm looking for in this instance (short of creating an abbreviation for every single capital letter).
Hmmm, tempting to Trigger Macro With Voice Command as @kcwhat demonstrated using Dictation. The details of just how a letter or word would be capitalized would depend on your word processing application.
Or, taking the simpler approach, you could just use Dictation's “Caps” to capitalize the next word.
I've been trying this out and it definitely seems like a really good solution – thanks @ccstone!
I've noticed a couple of things:
It doesn't work when trying to capitalise the first word when writing a new email in the app I use (Front for macOS). Do you have any idea why this might be?
I've noticed just one undesired consequence so far: if you try to start a sentence with say "Attain" or "See" (i.e., where the second and third letters in the word are the same), you'll end up with "ATain" or "SE"). Is there a solution to this?
To clarify, here's what I type versus what is subsequently displayed:
ssee > SE
aattain > ATain
In terms of how you've described the functionality above (with regards to consecutive caps) it makes sense that this would happen, but it isn't desired in my case. Is there a way to turn consecutive caps off? I'm afraid I have zero familiarity with regular expressions.
