It looks like you may be confusing the macros in the default global macro group for the global palette group. Despite the similar naming, they're not the same thing. I'm guessing you're using that top "Global Macro Group Palette" macro at the top of the palette to show that palette? If so, then it's probably a conflict palette style palette, not the global palette. You could try adding global palette triggers to several macros:
and see if the actual global palette with your chosen theme settings doesn't show up, or try changing the theme settings for the conflict palette and see if they're reflected in that one.
Hmm... I don't typically use those triggers to be honest. Maybe a little more context will explain my issue better.
I have this particular macro that I trigger via a BetterTouchTool gesture. It lists all macros in my Global Macro Group. It's definitely not a conflict palette.
A little more tinkering and I have found that changing the default palette style does affect this, but I don't want ALL of my default palettes to have multiple columns. So I'm not sure how to make this particular palette show 3 columns because no other settings seem to apply to it.
Thanks, that does help. I thought you were using the Show Palette of Macros action, which does produce a palette that behaves like a conflict palette, but yes, the Show Macro Group palette is a default palette and behaves as such, as you said. And yes, I don't typically use the global macro palette triggers either; my suggestion for that was only to demonstrate that they were actually for the separate, similarly/confusingly named Global Macro palette, which I think has now been cleared up.
As for how to style individual macro group palettes, I believe the only way to do so is in the macro group's settings, like this one I've customized for BBEdit:
and for better and worse, the settings we can tweak for the default global macro group are limited and don't allow this. If you want to customize that palette, the only viable solution I can think of is to create a new global macro group that you can tweak as you like and move all those macros there.
Read Palettes user manual section. The palette shown is for the Global Macro Group, which generally cannot be shown as a palette unless you explicitly show it, but in any even it is not the Global Macro Palette, which is made up of active macros with the Global Macro Palette trigger.
The Global Macro Group has limited configurations so you cannot control how the palette appears. If you want a palette of macros, you should create a new macro group and put your macros in it, and configure how and when it appears in the macro group settings.
Thanks Peter, that cleared it up. I haven't really used palettes much but lately I've been tooling around with incorporating BetterTouchTool with them for certain use cases.