Can't Sequentially Open Two Apps With Either Time of the Day Or CRON Triggers

Questions & Suggestions
1

At 4:30 am every day, I want to open DevonThink and Apple Mail.
I can't figure out why only the first app in the list opens.

Note that the time in the macro is 9:59 because I was running tests.

What I tried:

  • To add a 2 minute pause
  • Invert the sequence, ie 1st Apple Mail → pause → DevonThink which causes to open Mail first
  • I tried using a CRON trigger 0 6 * * * (here for 6 am)

Note that:

  • I use CRON and Time of the Day triggers a lot during the night to display important messages which I must see in the morning, with no problems, even when my Mac is asleep.
  • Mac prefs are set so that my Mac does not sleep.

Thank you!

Open DevonThink and Apple Mail w time day trigger.kmmacros (3.0 KB)

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image1084×1134 145 KB

2

Hey @ronald,

Have you looked at the Keyboard Maestro Engine log to see if there're any error messages?

Your macro worked for me, although I had to change DEVONthink to BBEdit to test with.

I also changed the action timeouts for the activate-app actions to 1 minute.

You could try running this instead of the activate-app actions just to see what happens.

tell application "DEVONthink Pro" -- Change name as needed...
   activate
end tell

delay 5

tell application "Mail"
   activate
end tell

I assume you've tried:

  • Restarting the Keyboard Maestro Engine.
  • Rebooting.

-Chris

3

Yes, for both.

Your script works perfectly.

Thanks very much Chris.

4

Hey @ronald,

That's troublesome...

??

If you can find a reason or create a test-case that Peter can repeat then he can fix it.

-Chris

1 Like
5

  • engine log below

  • thank you Chris for solving the problem with a script.

2022-01-04 09:56:00 Execute macro “Open DevonThink and Apple Mail @4:30 am daily” from trigger At 09:56 every day
2022-01-04 09:56:19 Running application query took a while (4102 us)
2022-01-04 09:56:19 Running application query took a while (6330 us)
2022-01-04 09:56:19 Running application query took a while (3001 us)
2022-01-04 09:56:20 Action 24447 timeout exceeded. Macro “Open DevonThink and Apple Mail @4:30 am daily” cancelled (while executing Activate Mail).

The above opened Mail but not DevonThink

7

Hey @ronald,

You had the action time-outs set for 20 seconds...

image

Change that to a couple of minutes, and see what happens.

-Chris

2 Likes
8

Worked fine. Thanks a lot Chris!