So the Value Inspector is great, but (and maybe I'm doing something wrong here) it disappears the moment I go to another application. Kinda makes it a lot less useful if I can't inspect values in the app I'm writing a macro for!
Good news: this feature already exists. From the KM Wiki:
https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/manual/Windows#Value_Inspector_Window
The contextual menu (control or right click in the window) will allow you to toggle whether the window is displayed only while the Keyboard Maestro editor is at the front, or whether the window floats above all applications.
That said, it is definitely not obvious that you can do this (I didn't know it myself until I saw this post, remembered that the value inspector is a thing now, and went to the wiki to refresh my memory on what it can do) so I think it may be worth suggesting that this feature be made more visible somehow.
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Aha! Wonderful. I feel like I tried right-clicking somewhere in that window but maybe I imagined it (it is very late here >.<)
Thanks!
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Yes, it is not obvious. The window doesn't really have any good place to put the checkbox, and the contextual menu produces zero clutter (at the expense of discoverability). But if anyone has used an iPhone any time recently, they know Apple is all for reduction in visual clutter no matter the cost, so I figure I'm on safe ground for this one case…
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Really, Peter? I think you know better than that. That is a lame excuse for many reasons, just to name a few:
- Good UI on a small iPhone screen is rarely, if ever, good UI on a Mac which supports very large screens, like the iMac-27.
- Apple's application UI is rarely, if ever, best of the breed. IMO, it is never a good idea to just blindly follow Apple's UI design.
- I can't think of one Apple Mac app that has better UI than its third party competitors.
Just to name a few examples:- KM is much better than Apple Automator
- MS Outlook (and all of its sub-apps) is much better than Apple Mail, Calendar, Contacts
- MS Word is much better than Apple Pages
- MS Excel is much better than Apple Numbers
- BBEdit is much better than Apple TextEdit
- etc
- One person's "clutter" is another person's essential information
At the very minimum, you could add a Gear Options menu to the Value Inspector.
This would be consistent with KM UI in general, minimize "clutter", and yet provide an intuitive (for KM users) UI.
Please consider this a feature change request.
Also, even the context menu is non-standard:
I really don't know what that means.
The macOS standard is "Always display on top" (or something very similar)
Thanks.
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“I say it’s a joke, son”
Regardless, there is the issue that there is no good place to put the checkbox and it's unlikely to change.
A gear menu is a possibility.
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That's good to hear. Since you're so new to online posting 
, I'll give you this tip:
Sarcasm and jokes, presented only in text, are hard to convey properly. So, if one must post a joke, it is best to give some indication of doing so, like a "wink" emoji.
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The Value inspector is awesome and I am really finding a need for it in some of the stuff I am using. Is there a way to pick from a dropdown like you can in variables actions or even the Clipboard options for Global Variables that show up in the preferences?
Hey @skillet,
Yes, and no.
You can hit F5 while in a variable field and bring up a list, but it's not very useful.
- Search starts at beginning of variable name.
- Pg(Up/Down), Home, and End don't work properly.
@peternlewis – can you make the Insert Variable by Name function work with the Value Inspector window in Keyboard Maestro 10?
-Chris
That is cool I didn't realize that I am always in favor of getting away from the mouse when possible.
This would be helpful and a little more accurate and faster for me.
Maybe. I'll add it to the list anyway.
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