I notice that a few months or years down the road, I tend to forget the rationale for creating certain macro groups, palettes and sub-palettes.
thank you
Yep, me too.
Until/If we get that feature, one workaround is to create a standard Macro for all your Groups named something like "Macro Group Comments", with only one Action, a Comment Action.
Buy using the same Macro Name in all Groups, you can easily search for them to see a list of MG comments.
2 Likes
great idea, thank you
I'd like to add a request to comment individual actions, just to the right of the Action title.
Like commenting code, I'd like to be able to jot down an important reminder for each step, if possible.
I totally understand that, as I am a big fan of comments in code.
FWIW, there are two ways you can do that now in KM:
- Rename the Action -- I often use this method
- Use the "Set Note" option in the Action Gear box.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
I'd like a field next to the title where I can just click and type.
The other options add steps, and you have to drill down to look at notes
I think this would be far too much visual noise to have on every action.
As well as renaming the action, and the Note within the action, there is a Comment action that can be used if you want something more verbose and visible.
A comment for Macro Groups is on the todo list, but I don't know when/if it will be implemented.
3 Likes
I have the same request.
As the number of macros and groups grew, dependencies developed between groups, with some activated/deactivated by others and so on.
The nice trick of having a dedicated comment-only macro inside a group is an appreciated workaround, but it is not really comfortable.
I would like to see the comment when I select the group.
Having to select a macro inside the group is an extra click. There is only a single window in which everything happens. Unless there are multiple windows, clicking back and forth multiple times becomes tedious.
Some things could reduce the visual noise (which, I agree with Peter Lewis, is an issue), for example I have so far never used the options "or by script, or by execute… , or via the web server… " Those three might be collapsed into a single menu, for example. Or showing/hiding them might be a preference setting.
The Comment action is decidedly useful, but it has a title and a comment field. Those could usefully be collapsed into a single field, and only the first line of that shown when the comment is folded up.
However, in fine, I would certainly like a comment field just below the title field of every macro group and of every macro.
Now, to almost every macro I add a comment action, which takes much more room than a comment field just below the macro title. And for a group there is no ability to add a comment.
Conclusion: please add a comment field to a macro group.
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Hey Robert,
Don't hold your breath – Peter said it was on the to-do list almost two years ago...
In the meantime – remember that you can rename actions, so you can add a one-line comment any old place without adding much bulk.
Plus you can add details to the interior comment field if more information is desired.
Keep in mind too that you can use Actions > Set Note to add notes to actions directly, and you can add keyboard shortcuts to the Keyboard Maestro Editor (or create macros) to make this easier.
The action's gear menu shows a slight tint when there's a note. Unfortunately at least in dark mode on Mojave that's a bit difficult to discern.
@peternlewis – I wish notes were displayed in the Macro Inspector window.
-Chris
Following on from that very. good suggestion (and I do rename Actions exactly like that) I have been finding recently that another really good way to annotate Macros is to enclose a series of Actions that do a particular thing, in a Group Action and rename and colour that Group Action. Just another way to make it clearer what is going on.
Because I do this all the time, I made a Macro that encloses the selected Actions in a Group, sets that enclosing Group Action to Green (which indicates notes for me) and renames the Group starting with "Comment: " putting the cursor in the right place to begin typing the Comment.
Engroup - Group with Comment.kmmacros (6.4 KB)
Just to show what I mean, here are two Actions with no comment:
And here are the same two Actions inside the Group/Comment:
4 Likes
That's very nice. Thanks for sharing that!
1 Like
This had been very helpful macro but recently the macro has stopped shading the ENCLOSING group & activating Renaming of the enclosing group.
Instead, the macro now shades the top action WITHIN the Group, shades that in green, and activates renaming just for that top action.
It seems to be interpreting the Actions/Parent Action as referring to the top action in the enclosed Group rather than to the entire enclosed Group.
Wonder what has changed in KM to affect the behavior of this macro, which i had found very useful and a great time saver...
Just troubleshot the macro. Added Pauses between the actions after Enclosing the Group - and now macro working as it always had been...
Strange that did not need the Pauses before...