Having read on a recent forum post that it's worth having a deeper understanding of the Pause Until action, I've been doing a deep dive on the action's options.
Having followed the Pause Until docs to the Found Image docs, it seems as though most of the options on Found Image are not covered in the docs.
…with this screenshot from Keyboard Maestro 11.0.3…
Clicking on the Image: menu reveals 6 whole comparison types not listed in the Found Image docs: Icon:, System Clipboard, Trigger Clipboard, Named Clibpoard:, File:, and Screen:
The screenshot needs updating, but the options are listed:
Alternatively (v9.0+), you can get the image to search from the System Clipboard, Trigger Clipboard, a Named Clipboard, a file, or from an image elsewhere on the screen.
...although they do miss "Icon".
Do you feel that the actual options need more explanation, or just be more obvious?
Yesterday, I tried to figure out how the File: option worked and made the mistake of thinking that it would un-pause when the selected file was somehow present on-screen. Only when I came back to it today did I realize that the intention is for the selected file to contain content equivalent to what one pastes into the image well in the default option.
And I stlil can't figure out what one would do with the Screen in… option:
The way you created that action, the action will wait until the image that fills all your screens can be found in the entire area of all your screens. I checked the Display box, and sure enough, all my screens turned green and the "click for result" field turned "true".
Most KM actions and their options can be read quite literally. In this case, as @Airy says, it's "does the image across the entirety of the display area match the image across the entirety of the display area".
Well, yes! Semantically/logically correct -- but not, perhaps, that useful...
The fun comes when you dig through the other options available. So you could pause until one display shows the same as another:
...or the frontmost browser window's web page looks the same as the reference version in another window:
...or you might compare two areas of the same window:
...perhaps in an audio processor with "stacked bar" level indicators, and you wanted to wait until two channels were at the same level.
Don't forget that while we may more naturally think of "wait until these things match", you can reverse the condition using "none of the following are true" -- so for the audio example you could pause until the levels are different.
If you want to play around with these, try using an "If..." action, the "Found Image" Condition, and "True" and "False" text displays. More definitive feedback than a "Pause", which'll help you see what's happening.
I see. The "screens" configuration I happened to select first just happens to be nonsensical as a sentence. Compare my first v.11 screenshot, "The screen contains [this] image in all screens" to my last, "The screen contains screen in all screens in all screens".
Thanks to all your excellent feedback, I see now that the 2 instances of "in all screens" get compared with each other.
The docs would be clearer with explicit details about how to use this screen comparison, but in the meantime, just linking this discussion would be a great improvement. @Nige_S, your list of specific examples is particularly inspiring!
Semantically/logically correct -- but not, perhaps, that useful...
