Best Examples of Keyboard Maestro Macros

Questions & Suggestions
,
8

Hey JM,

This is a list of stuff I’ve thrown into my example group. Nothing has been prepared for public consumption, so I won’t post the macros at this time — but If you see something you want to look at let me know.

-Chris

  • ACME Telephone Number Look-Up
  • ACME Telephone Number Look-Up v1.1
  • Activate an Application
  • Activate Default HTTP Helper-App
  • Add Prefix to Text on Clipboard
  • AirPort { Toggle On/Off }
  • Amazon Log-In
  • Append Text to a file with Find/Replace on the Clipboard
  • Append to Text File » Safari Selection, Title, & URL
  • Append to the Clipboard
  • AppleScript with KM-Path-Parameter
  • Array { Get Value using a Regular Expression }
  • Arrays { Display Value & Click at Cooerdinates }
  • Bruce Jackson » Labels & Addresses Demo
  • Calculate Specific Date in Seconds
  • Calculation Example → Time()
  • Cancel on Error Example
  • Change Case { Uppercase }
  • Click Found Image
  • Click the first Web element that matches an XPath
  • Clipboard { Paste Sequentially from History }
  • Convert FURLs on the Clipboard to Posix Paths
  • Copy as quote from Papers.app
  • Creating New Variables on the Fly
  • Custom HTML Prompt
  • Date/Time { ICU Construct }
  • Day One { New Note with Creation Date } { Troubleshooting Version }
  • Delete Duplicate Lines using the Shell
  • Delete Files Containing { Strings } from a Specific Folder
  • Discover Front Application
  • Display Current Mouse Position { Philippe Martin }
  • Display Text in Window
  • Download CSV Data and Open File in Excel Using Bash v0.1
  • Download CSV Data and Open File in Excel Using Bash v0.2
  • Download File to New Dated Directory
  • Download Google Spreadsheet and Open in Excel
  • Dropbox Path plus Sub-Path
  • Dynamically Created User Input List
  • Evernote { Massage Title of Selected Note }
  • Excel → Import CSV Data
  • Excel Brute Force Import
  • Expanding Home Path from KM Variable
  • Extract Email Addresses from Safari
  • Extract Market Value from Selected Email v1.0
  • Extract Market Value from Selected Email v1.01
  • File { Copy IF file size of Source > Destination }
  • Files { Select in Front Window } { KM Version }
  • Find and Copy Files { Recursive }
  • Find and Replace Selected Word in Clipboard
  • Find Files in Front Window { Finder Insertion Location }
  • Find First Image
  • Find First Instance of File with in
  • Find Image on Screen
  • Find Image on Screen (and/or Click)
  • Finder { Resize Name Column using System Events }
  • Finder → Rename and Sequentially Number Selected Items
  • Finder-Selection { Display Paths Briefly }
  • Finder-Selection { Set Tags of Selected Items to Red }
  • Folder Watcher
  • Generate and Paste Email Salutation
  • Get Most Recent File Added to the Documents Folder
  • Google Chrome » Send Tab to OneTab
  • Google Links to TextWrangler
  • Google Search with Clipboard & Encode Entities
  • Google Translate via Python Script
  • Highlight Target or Oval or Rectangle
  • If Files Exist… Then…
  • Insert Dates into Confluence v1.0
  • Insert Dates into Confluence v1.1
  • Insert Last Word of Sentence at Cursor Position
  • Iterate Through Lines in a File
  • Kill & Restart the Selected App
  • Links { Load URL from TextWrangler Front Window }
  • Lookup Email Address
  • Lookup Email Address v0.02
  • Mail » Mark as NOT-Junk and Move to InBox
  • Match URLs with Perl ; Open in Safari
  • Meta-Data Report { mdls }
  • Microsoft Outlook » Extract Email Subject and Replace in Template
  • Move and Resize Front Window
  • Multi-Line Dialog using AppleScript
  • New Mail Message with Embedded Safari Link
  • New Mail Message with Embedded Safari Link {SEV}
  • nvALT { Create New Note }
  • Of Results and Notifications
  • OmniFocus Launcher for Vlad
  • Open Downloaded PDFs in Preview
  • Open or Switch to CafeTran
  • Open Sound Preferences
  • Open URL
  • Open_Wiki_Search
  • Paste User Input into TextEdit
  • Path Finder » Set Tags of Selected Items to Red
  • Path Finder » Set Tags of Selected Items to Red copy
  • Pause with Variable
  • Reformat Text
  • RegEx { Capture Groups with Display to Visualize Them }
  • RegEx { Copy; Find & Replace the Clipboard; Display Text }
  • RegEx { Copy; Find & Replace the Clipboard; Paste }
  • RegEx { Find & Replace in Variable }
  • RegEx { Find Pattern in Lines }
  • RegEx { Find Substrings } 01
  • RegEx { Find Substrings } 02
  • RegEx { Find Substrings } 03
  • RegEx { Find/Replace Clipboard with User-Prompt for Pattern }
  • RegEx { Gather 4 Paragraphs into 4 Variables }
  • RegEx → Find Enumerated Instance of CSV
  • RegEx to Split String into Variables
  • Regular Expression » Keyboard Maestro » Find in Lines
  • Remove Duplicate Lines { Perl }
  • Replace 2 Spaces with 1 Space { Octal }
  • Right-Click at Cursor Position
  • Safari » If Text is Found in Front Page Then…
  • Safari Log-In » brighthouse.com
  • Safari Page Text to TextWrangler
  • Safari Text to TextWrangler
  • Safari Text to TextWrangler with Processing
  • Search the Web
  • Sentence Case
  • Set Front App via Name Matching
  • Set Keyboard Maestro Variables en mas
  • Set Named Clipboard to Syled-Text
  • Shell » Run Perl on the Clipboard
  • Shell: Echo to Floating Window
  • Show Apple » Recent Items
  • Show the Keyboard Maestro Status Menu
  • Split Array with RegEx
  • Swith Action with Calculation
  • Take NVAlt Note
  • Test { If All Conditions Are Met }
  • Test { Text-Matches }
  • Text Paste Plain Text
  • Toggle ~Library Folder Visibility
  • Toggle Finder Window Open/Closed
  • Toggle Visibility of User Library
  • Toggling between two languages (Swift hack)
  • Tony ; Schools Filter
  • Translate Characters from English to Russian & Change Input Language
  • Typinator Modifier
  • User Input 01
  • User Input 02
  • User Input Creates Collection of Folders
  • Window » Pos, Size Lookup
  • Word & Character Count of Selected-Text { AppleScript }
  • Word & Character Count of Selected-Text { shell wc }
  • Write File with Conditions
5 Likes
9

Wow. That’s about the sum of it.

Thanks for the share - some serious food for thought here!

10

Peter I like a majority of these. I assume I could import these to a set so they wouldn’t crowd my other macros?

11

Chris I could easily use more than half of these. At least to look over and learn from.

Some I am very curious about are:
ACME Telephone Number Look-Up
ACME Telephone Number Look-Up v1.1
Add Prefix to Text on Clipboard
Typinator Modifier - (what does it do?)
User Input Creates Collection Of folders
Finder { Resize Name Column using System Events }
Finder → Rename and Sequentially Number Selected Items
Finder-Selection { Display Paths Briefly }
Finder-Selection { Set Tags of Selected Items to Red }
Folder Watcher
Generate and Paste Email Salutation
Get Most Recent File Added to the Documents Folder
Lookup Email Address
Lookup Email Address v0.02
Meta-Data Report { mdls } - very curious what this does
nvALT { Create New Note } - I LOVE nvALT!!!
Safari Page Text to TextWrangler
Safari Text to TextWrangler
Safari Text to TextWrangler with Processing
Sentence Case
Toggle ~Library Folder Visibility
Take NVAlt Note
Test { If All Conditions Are Met }
Test { Text-Matches }
Text Paste Plain Text

1 Like
12

Hey John,

I made a mass change in abbreviations a while back, and I used Keyboard Maestro to do the majority of the work by driving the UI and doing find/replace on the clipboard.

It creates a report of the metadata tags Spotlight sees for the selected file in the Finder and opens it in TextEdit.

That batch wouldn't be too hard to clean up, although you'll have to have the Satimage.osax installed for some of them to work.

I'll fool with them over the weekend.

-Chris

13

The one I posted are all within an Examples Macro Group, so they wont pollute your existing macros, and disabling that macro group will ensure they don’t execute.

Also note a couple things for this sort of question:

  • Importing macros can be undone, so you can import the macros and then undo it.
  • If you quit and relaunch the Keyboard Maestro editor, you can then use the File ➤ Revert Macros menu to revert to the macros as they were when you launched the editor, so you can import macros and then back out by reverting back to “At Editor Launch”.

That said, if you import macros, the macros can run immediately (for example , if triggered by something like Periodic Every Second), so if you are importing a macro from an untrusted source, it can execute something pretty much immediately - this is something to keep in mind if you don’t trust where you are getting the macros from. You can safeguard yourself by holding all the modifiers (Command,Option,Shift,Control) down when importing macros (which will import them disabled), or by relaunching the Keyboard Maestro editor (as above) and then quitting the Keyboard Maestro Engine so no macros are run, and then importing the macros. Then you can look through the macros and verify their behaviour and/or disable them and then relaunch the Keyboard Maestro Engine.

3 Likes
14

Good to know Peter. Was not aware of the “revert”.

15

Could I please add my name to this list if you’re willing to share. New to KeyboardMaestro and your list seems too enticing to resist.

Bolli

16

A post was split to a new topic: Converting Case

17

@JMichaelTX - I really like this idea, and I did rely heavily on Peter’s example macros to get started with KM and found them very useful. Likewise the email drip campaign after I purchased KM.

I wonder if breaking up this “best of” list into a “Getting started/Intermediate/Expert/Going Completely Nuts” type grouping would be useful. Extend the existing walk through with more examples.

2 Likes
18

I agree.

19

Hey John,

Okay. I've finally cleaned these up for public consumption.

Note – Some macros require support files which are iincluded in the zip file.

  • PDF address book file (included).
  • Text address book file (included).
  • AppleScript for resizing the name column in the Finder (included).
  • pdftotext Unix executable (download links included – get the precompiled binaries for the Mac)

Example Macros by ccs.zip (90.0 KB)

-Chris

The following Macros are included

ACME Telephone Number Look-Up v1.0
ACME Telephone Number Look-Up v1.1
Add Prefix to Text on Clipboard
Finder → Rename and Sequentially Number Selected Items
Finder → Resize Name Column using System Events
Finder-Selection → Display Paths in a Window
Finder-Selection → Set Tags of Selected Items to Red
Folder Watcher
Generate and Paste Email Salutation
Get Most Recent File Added to the Documents Folder
Lookup Email Address v0.01
Lookup Email Address v0.02
mdls → Meta-Data Report → Display in TextEdit
nvALT → Create New Note with Tags
Paste as Plain Text
Safari Page Text to TextWrangler
Safari Text to TextWrangler with Processing
Sentence Case
Take NVAlt Note
Test → If All Conditions Are Met
Test → Text-Matches
Title Case → Selected Text
Toggle ~Library Folder Visibility
User Input Creates Collection of Folders

2 Likes
20

Hi Chris,
Thanks for taking the time. Should I use "Import Macros" or "Import To Macro Libarary"?
I have not run into Xpdf but am intrigued!

Also to install Xpdf I assume I need to: make install?
I see there's an installer for the 64bit version but it's 3.03. Thanks for providing the link as well to the 3.04 download.

-J

21

Hey John,

Just double-click the Example Macros by ccs.kmmacros file, and it will import into its own group.

There are nine useful tools, but the one I use most often is pdftotext.

It's a fantastic little tool, and it's the only such tool I know of that will attempt to preserve the layout of a PDF when it converts it (which makes parsing the resulting text much easier most of the time).

The basic syntax for pdftotext is:

pdftotext -layout <path> -

Replace <path> with the path to your file.

Quote the path with double or single quotes if it has ANY spaces in it.

The trailing dash is required if you want your output to go to the console – otherwise a new file will be written.

No. Read the INSTALL file in your favorite text editor and follow its instructions.

The xpdfbin 3.04 precompiled binaries are here:

ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdfbin-mac-3.04.tar.gz

The /user/local/… directories are invisible in the Finder.

Use ⇧⌘G in a Finder window to bring up the Go-To-Folder sheet.

Paste in the path you want to go to.

Hit the Go button.

And the correct directory will open in the Finder window.

-Chris

1 Like
22

Thanks for the details Chris. I did find the correct directories but what stopped me when I first took a look at this was that I don't have an /usr/local/man/ directory. I am on 10.11.5 so the MAN path was perplexing and I think I have it figured out. I am posting this so if someone else has problems they will know what to do.

I googled and found I could find out the path to any MAN (manual) document by typing:
MAN COMMAND --path
So for example to find the path to the man page for the MacOS MANual I can type:
man man --path
Which returns:
/usr/share/man/man1/man.1

So I dropped the man files in the /usr/share/man/man1 and /usr/share/man/man5 directories and tested it. Worked!

I was really pleased with how it handles displaying some invoices I fed to it using the 'layout' option you suggested.

I took a look at your macros and was delighted to find two for nvALT which is a favorite of mine. I use it for everything. I see you have a tag of scratchx which I am guessing is scratch pad? I am not really using tags too much with nvALT but maybe I will. Thanks for some great stuff. It's going to take me a little time to get through all these and truly understand how they work but they are great.

J.

24

Hey John,

Better to put them where the dev says to put them – outside of the normal user-paths.

I may have had to create that directory, but I don't remember any more.

Aside from the xpdf stuff the only thing currently in there on my system is the interarchy command-line tool.

But it all works fine.

Yes – this is why it's superior to all other tools I've tried to date.

I wrote that macro for someone else, and “scratchx” was their specified tag name.

-Chris

25

I definitely needed "Move Selected Files to Desktop" as an example. I've been looking everywhere to find a way to manually move receipts to various quarterly folders and spent considerable time today trying to figure it out. This came in my email today! Thanks so much!

1 Like
26

Does anyone remember the “Put Away” command from OS 9.x days?

I will have to look at the Move Selected Files To Desktop action. I might actually be able to keep my desktop clean for once. :wink:

27

Hi ccstone,

could you please be so kind to tell me where to find your example group for download?
Especially I’m interested in “Shell: Echo to Floating Window” to find out how to target a system floating window.

Thanks a lot in advance
LarryLayouter

28

That's from @ccstone. I'm sure he'll reply to this and let you know.