Determining which macro is going rogue and debugging it

[orsini]

I added/edited several new macros over the weekend.

Since then, sometimes this is happening:

Counter keeps growing until I kill KM's process and my bluetooth trackpad behaves weirdly for a long time even after I do that.

How can I determine which of the macros is causing this?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[gglick]

Try opening the KM Engine log, found under KM's Help menu, and see if that doesn't reveal which macro(s) have been misbehaving:

[orsini]

Will try that out, thanks!

[ccstone]

@gglick

Try opening the KM Engine log

Hey @orsini,

Here's how to make that painless:

If you don't have BBEdit then please install it, because even if you don't eventually buy BBEdit (commercial) the BBEdit-Lite (free) version it reverts to after a 30 day demo is seriously powerful and very scriptable.

Open the Keyboard Maestro Engine Log in the Console or BBEdit

-Chris

[ccstone]

@orsini

How can I determine which of the macros is causing this?

Hey @orsini,

A couple more things:

A) Look in the “Cancel” menu of the Keyboard Maestro Status menu in the menu bar, and see what's actually running.

B) Make sure you have a kill-all-macros macro with a keyboard shortcut you remember.

See these threads:

Hard Quit Stop Cancel the Keyboard Maestro ENGINE with KeyStroke

Hey Christian, You got bit eh? Everyone who uses Keyboard Maestro should have a keyboard-driven Kill-All-Maros Macro. I learned that the hard way long ago and have advocated it ever since. The macro has saved me a lot of trouble several times and completely saved my bacon once. -Chris Tags: @KillSwitch, @Kill_Switch, @Switch, @CancelAllMacros, @Cancel_All_Macros, @Kill_All_Macros, @KillAllMacros

Breaking from a running macro

Hey Jon, That's the Keyboard Maestro Status Menu in the menu bar. And no that is not how to break from a running macro; it's to cancel all running macros in case something is amiss. It's a very good idea to have a kill-all-maros macro: Kill All Macros.kmmacros (1.5 KB) [image] Because it can be easier to hit a keyboard shortcut than use the mouse in that fashion if you have a runaway process. You'll note inside the Status Menu there's a submenu called “Cancel” – from there you can cancel …

-Chris

[peternlewis]

This is almost always the Allow JavaScript From Apple Events issue.

Not absolutely always, but by far the most common cause of massive numbers of notifications.

[orsini]

Thanks everyone. This community is amazingly responsive and informative.

Peter, your hunch is correct, this is related to a browser action after all:

My guess is that it doesn't fail gracefully if it doesn't find the button...

[peternlewis]

Its not the button, it is the Wait For Browser to Finish Loading action. It is spinning checking the page loaded status, which includes a JavaScript request which fails until you enable Allow JavaScript From Apple Events, hence the large number of notifications (all of which are telling you to enable that permission.

[orsini]

Got it. Really helpful, thanks!