Constant clicking macro

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hi everyone,

I want to set up a macro where I press a button on the keyboard and it constantly left clicks the trackpad until I let go out that button. However, I can only set the maximum to “triple click” within the software. I’m not a techie as you can see so any guidance on how to set that up would be helpful.

I hope there is a solution to this as it would save a ton of clicking saving me time and a possibly ruined trackpad. Please let me know.

2

Use the Repeat or While action, together with the click action and possibly a pause action.

  • While “key x is down”
    • Click
    • Pause 0.1
3

Thanks peter, I’m a complete newbie so how would I go and set this up?

4

Hey Sam,

Have a look at the wiki.

https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/Home_Page

See the Quick Start Page:

https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/Quick_Start

See also:

• Macros
• Macro Groups

Search for the Move or Click Mouse action.

Other documentation:

https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/documentation/7/keyboardmaestro.html
https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/documentation/7/keyboardmaestro.pdf

Spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the basics.

If you find yourself still scratching your head then holler.

-Chris

5

Thanks guys, I’ll report back to you.

The resources you suggested will be massively helpful.

6

(Resurrecting this thread because it keeps coming up at the top of my Google searches anyway)

So I've made a simple macro of the above:

Screenshot_10_6_19__7_35_PM
Screenshot_10_6_19__7_35_PM.png2006×804 155 KB

It triggers fine, but if I hold down ⌘-2, the clicking will only repeat for 10 seconds. I have to release and re-press ⌘-2 to start the repeating clicks.

Any idea what's causing that timeout? If I hold down a key in Terminal, it'll repeat forever.

7

I'm guessing it's timing out because you're spawning hundreds of instances of that macro, which is not the most efficient way to go about it. Try placing those actions inside a While loop:

image

2 Likes
8

Thanks, I think you were spot-on there. The while loop works perfectly.

1 Like
9

Hot keys will only continue to repeat for a maximum of 10 seconds by default, basically as a safety mechanism in case they are somehow “stuck down”.

You can set the maximum key down trigger time for Hot Key triggers (default 10 seconds)

defaults write com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.engine MaxKeyRepeatTime -float 10.0
1 Like
10

Ahh, I thought I'd checked that holding down a key in terminal, but it was only a normal key. Good to know about hotkeys though (and the plist setting), I'd not known that about OS-X. Thanks!