Difference between "active macro" and "enabled macro"?

[iamdannywyatt]

I have an IF THEN action to see if a particular macro is running (I would say that the macro is "Active"), but whether I pick

Or

Even if the macro "Cut and Paste (Cut)" is not running, I get the same result after that, which is to show me a Notification action.

I was assuming that "Active" would mean that the macro was running, and "Enabled" was just that the macro was enabled inside the macro group.

Am I missing something here?

[Zabobon]

This seems to be the answer - i.e. "Active" means the Macro is in a Group which is Active (most likely because that Group is set to work when an App like Photoshop is at the front). "Active" does not mean the Macro is actually running.

Difference between Group enable/disable vs. activate/deactivate

The primary difference between enable/disable and activate/deactivate is that the former is a semi-permanent, editor visible, syncable change. The latter is a transient change, a change of state of the engine. Essentially, the concept of Enable/Disable stems from enabling and disabling groups/macros/actions in the editor, while the concept of activate/deactivate stems from macro groups being active or not in a specific application. The reason for the different behaviour described probably rel…

[tiffle]

@iamdannywyatt

to see if a particular macro is running

Generally speaking you can’t do this as explained in this thread Detect all running macros - #2 by peternlewis

But - it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. For example, using a semaphore lock in the macro you want to check for “running” allows any other of your macros to query that semaphore and act accordingly.

[peternlewis]

There are some ways you can do this now with the ExecutingInstances token and the ExecutingInstanceName token.

It does not make sense to ask whether a specific macro is executing because the engine execution instance is, to a degree, disconnected from the original macro - the macro could be started, changed, started again, and then what does it mean to be running.