How do you use Palettes (if you do)?

FYI, this was pathetic — I already had one of these set up — just so long ago that I forgot about it — I use it but didn’t think about how it works.

I’m still unclear about when I should email you and when I should post. Your comments on my posts would be welcome. I tend to get a little manic in spurts and lack some judgment.

— Mitchell

This is a fascinating topic. I suspect palettes are one of the more difficult KM features to understand, and one of the most underutilitzed.

####How Do I Prevent the Palette from Displaying when I manually goto an App?

The following Macro Group Palette displays as soon as I click in my Evernote App. I don't want it to display until I press the hot key. How do I do this?

@peternlewis, in the Macro Groups [Keyboard Maestro Wiki] article, it states several times:

set the Macro Group to Show a palette.

Yet I don't see this as an option anywhere in the Macro Group settings.

What do you mean by this?

MitchellModel - I hope you consider always posting your questions. This forum is by no means cluttered with posts, so I don’t think you have to worry there. And I’m learning so much just by reading other people’s questions - don’t deny me that opportunity in the future! :slight_smile:

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Hmmm. Looks like I misunderstood a Discourse feature in the post about “pathetic”. I had clicked the arrow to Peter’s picture and name and thought I was sending a private email to him. I don’t understand how it got posted.

Your Evernote Table Palette with start off hidden when Keyboard Maestro Engine is first launched.

When you are within Evernote, you can press Control-T to toggle the palette open. After that, the palette will be open while you are in Evernote. If you leave Evernote, it will disappear, and then when you return to Evernote it will reappear. If you press Control-T again while in Evernote it will close the palette.

The macros within it will be active if and only if the palette is visible.

Here's a palette I use during a certain workflow:

It lets me activate a specific application without having to wade through a longer list of running apps (I have ADD pretty bad (I take meds for it) so it's often hard for me to pick out something in a large list).

So the list contains a specific set of applications. But I show or hide the individual applications' icons depending on whether the app is running or not (sometimes this workflow doesn't require some apps, or it requires others).

So the macro group looks like this:

And then I have another set of macros (in a different group) to show/hide icons on the palette depending on if an app starts up or quits:

The macros themselves are self-explanatory, mostly, but I'll show one here:

And the Refresh macro:

There should be no need for the “Refresh Switcher Palette”, enabling the macro will cause it to appear in the macro group palette, and disabling it will cause it to disappear.

Yeah, that's what I thought also, but it doesn't. Here's the macros - two macro groups:

Custom App Switcher.kmlibrary (38.5 KB)

Ahh, I think it works if Keyboard Maestro (the editor) is running, but not otherwise. Due to the way the macros are not actually reloaded when the editor is not running and you enable/disable a macro via an action.

I’ll look in to it.

Thanks. I just wanted to say that I don't consider this a high priority item - it works just fine the way I do it.

Fixed for the next version.

I am a little disabled, and clicking a mouse can sometimes be a problem.
I use KM in a keyboard mode.
For menus I use conflict palettes - works well. (I use the same obscure hotkey for all the items in a group to make a conflict palette.)
But it would be simpler for me if one of the choices in the group conditions would make the palette act respond to keyboard choices like the conflict palette does.

Something like:
Shows a palette for one action when:
The hot key … is pressed.

The first unique letter of the palette entry is typed.

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I have just such a palette:

It is in a Macro Group named "KM Actions Palette"

Note that it is show for ONLY ONE action when triggered.

This group has these macros:

For example:

When I trigger this palette, using ^⌥A, I get this palette:

Then I just press "C" or "G" to trigger the macro I want.
And then the Palette window is closed.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

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Thanks for that.
It does not quite do what the conflict palette does.
In conflict menus you do not need to define hotkeys - the macro names are used.
In my conflict menu names I can have both:
Duplicate cell above
Duplicate line above
and C (for cell) and L (for line) will be active.

I guess I should have made it clear - I am not asking how to achieve this (conflict menus work fine).
I am really making a feature request to make creating menus simpler - just a tick in the group attributes which then uses the included macro names for the menu.
Thanks
Jim

I think I understand, but can you post an image of exactly what you want “ticked”?

The reason I ask is that one of us can probably create something to do what you want. But before I (or anyone else) does any work on it, I want to make sure I know exactly what you’re looking for. It would suck to do the work, and be wrong about the requirements! :slight_smile:

Functionality

When you check: The first unique letter of the corresponding macro palette entry is pressed.
The names of all the macros in this group would appear in a menu with the first unique letter in the name highlighted. Exactly the same as the functionality in a conflict menu at present.

Ohhhh, glad I asked. I didn’t understand.

So, the normal way you would do this is to assign the same hotkey to all the macros in a group, right? Then you’d get the conflict palette. Right?

But you’d rather not have to do that much mouse-work, to select each macro, put in the hotkey, select the next macro, put in the same hotkey, etc.

Do I have that right? Because if I do, I could write something that could assign the same hotkey to all the macros in a group. Would that help?

If so, here’s how it would work: You’d have to assign the hotkey to one macro. Then, with that macro selected, you’d run my macro. My macro would take the hotkey from the selected macro and assign it to all the other macros in that group.

Am I even close? :slight_smile:

Dan
Thanks for that, but I don’t need such a macro.
My system works fine.

It took me a long time to work out that this is a good way to do menus.
I was thinking of others.
If people could make a menu of all the macros in a group with just one tick I thought people could more rapidly add functionality without having to understand an implement the complexity of hotkey conflicts.

Cheers
jim

OK, cool. @peternlewis, you have been thusly requested. :slight_smile: