Change defaults for Typing Trigger

[edleafe]

New Keyboard Maestro user here. I want to add lots of Typed String Trigger macros, but I don't ever have a case where I would ever want them triggered in the middle of a word. The default for that trigger, though, is "following any character", and so I have to change this with the mouse every single time. Is there a way to change this default so that when I add a new Typed String Trigger, the default is "following a word break"?

[JMichaelTX]

While you can't change the defaults, you can create a "template" macro with the settings you like, and then just duplicate it for each new Macro you want to create.

You could even create a macro to "Create New Macro from Template" to make things really easy.

[edleafe]

Thanks for the reply. How would I create a macro to do the "create from template"? I don't see any actions that could somehow duplicate an existing macro.

[vincent_ardern]

Menu > Edit > Duplicate could be used in combination with some mouse move actions. There's probably an applescript alternative as well

[edleafe]

Thanks - found the menu items I needed, and now it's working!

[JMichaelTX]

@edleafe

How would I create a macro to do the "create from template"?

For a great tool and comprehensive solution, checkout this macro:
MACRO: [KMFAM] Favorite Actions and Macros by @DanThomas

Highly recommended.

But for a quick start:

1. Create a macro in the Macro Group where you will most likely need to create new macros. Give it a clever name like "Typed String Trigger Template".
2. When you want to create a new macro, select the above template macro, and press ⌘D
3. Give new macro an appropriate title and carry on.

[peternlewis]

If you are adding lots, you might want to use something like:

Create Text Expansions Macro

Here is a macro that lets you create simple text expansion macros. Simply fill in the text of the action with lines like: trigger:text where trigger is the Typed String trigger you want and text is the text you want to expand to. Then select all the actions and click the Try button at the bottom to run them once and it will create a macro for each expansion. There is no trigger on the macro since its not going to be a macro you want to run except occasionally. Note that to create a new exp…

or

Macro to Create a Text Expansion Macro from the Selected Text

Here is a macro for creating a new text expansion macro from the selected text. Select the desired text, trigger the macro (by default it is with a Status Menu trigger, adjust as desired), enter the trigger text when prompted and the macro will be created. Updated using version 8.x AppleScript facilities. Note that although it attempts to encode the HTML entities, the requirement is that it actually be XML entities, and so it will not necessarily work well for non-ASCII text. Create Text Exp…

A slight change to the XML would preset the “following any character” setting as you desire.

[edleafe]

Wow! I knew that Keyboard Maestro was powerful, but seeing these examples and some of the others in the macro library have opened my eyes. Now I need to avoid getting sucked into spending all my time playing with this...

[Tom]

You can also try my New Text Expansion From Selection macro.

It is based on Peter’s macro, but allows you to set some settings in the prompt. The “Match after any” setting is persistent between macro runs.