Efficient Way to Move Macros to a New Mac

[Nige_S]

@ronald

where and how do you delete those files ?

Those are commands you type as-is (or Paste, one line at a time) into Terminal. (The defaults utility lets you set defaults, aka "preferences" -- type man defaults in Terminal to learn more.)

@ronald

are the MacUUID and Remote UUIDs regenerated for the new Mac ?
thank you

Yes -- that's why you are doing this, to force new UUIDs on the new Mac so that they are unique and don't clash with the old ones.

[ronald]

thanks very much !

[cyoungers]

@peternlewis

If you intend to use both Macs, you need to manually delete the MacUUID and MacRemoteUUID entries with:

defaults delete com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.engine MacUUID
defaults delete com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.engine MacRemoteUUID 

Just so it is crystal clear to me, you need to perform this step before (after?) you copy the app support and preferences to the new Mac?

I've had issues with slow iCloud syncs and have been burned with sync a few times before. (I know that Dropbox may be a better solution). I don't develop macros on my second Mac so what I really want a one-way sync. Just an automated way of pushing updates to the new Mac on demand would be perfect.

[peternlewis]

@cyoungers

Just so it is crystal clear to me, you need to perform this step before (after?) you copy the app support and preferences to the new Mac?

After.

If you copy the files, then both Macs would have the same MacUUID and MacRemoteUUID, which since the UU means “Universally Unique”, is a bad thing.

So after you copy them, run the tow Terminal commands to delete the unique IDs, then Keyboard Maestro will regenerate new unique ones.

[peternlewis]

@cyoungers

I've had issues with slow iCloud syncs and have been burned with sync a few times before. (I know that Dropbox may be a better solution). I don't develop macros on my second Mac so what I really want a one-way sync. Just an automated way of pushing updates to the new Mac on demand would be perfect.

Yes, iCloud sync is not great.

And I agree, personally I much prefer one-way syncs, it avoids any chance of corruption.

What you can do is actually this:

• Set up macro syncing on the definitive Mac and save the file to your sync folder with a name like "definitive.kmsync".
• set up macro syncing on the secondary Mac(s) and save the file to your sync file with a name like "secondary.kmsync".

Have a macro that runs any time you quit or deactivate the Keyboard Maestro editor that copies the definitive.kmsync over the secondary.kmsync.

So then under no circumstances would the source Mac ever change (because no other Mac will ever update the definitive.kmsync file), and the remove Macs will end up with the definitive macros sooner or later no matter how slow the sync is.

[cyoungers]

Thanks @peternlewis , that is very helpful. I will give that a try.

[edit] One question, on the secondary Mac macro that copies the "definitive.kmsync" to overwrite the "secondary.kmsync", I assume it is ok to delete the "secondary.kmsync" out from underneath the secondary LM editor/engine before the copy happens?

[peternlewis]

@cyoungers

[edit] One question, on the secondary Mac macro that copies the "definitive.kmsync" to overwrite the "secondary.kmsync", I assume it is ok to delete the "secondary.kmsync" out from underneath the secondary LM editor/engine before the copy happens?

Yes, it's fine.

If you have multiple secondary Macs, you may want to only copy the file if it is actually different, or you could get in to a case where each Mac is copying the identical file, and the sync service keeps syncing them. You could use the md5 util to test if the files are different.

[cyoungers]

Thanks!

[Bernard-Joseph_Burch]

Thanks. Came here looking for this info. i've had KM for years and didn't know about this feature. As a rule, one should dig through the settings of apps more frequently.