I may be guilty of slightly over-using KM:
10 Likes
You win! If anyone can top that by another exponential factor my mind will be well and truly blown.
This is super awesome! I have been using Keyboard Maestro for an year now. But, I keep moving between computers and had to reinstall multiple times. It shows 12 hours currently.
I disagree to believe this. 
Funnily enough I have had Keyboard Maestro for a year or two. Iāve only saved ā3 monthsā of time. Iām not entirely certain how accurate that is either because most of the macros Iāve made arenāt really āfor saving timeā but for having funā¦ It would be interesting if there were ātime savedā stats for each macro you have madeā¦
There is, they are shown in the Macro Inspector, and you can sort the macros by Time Saved.
Some of the actions are overly optimistic in what they say they will save, so I am often adjusting the calculated times of actions. Clearly the whole concept is more for fun than reality, though inevitably there is some level of truth in it.
Have you tried the Launchpad? Looks like it might help you.
Launchpad is not a fast as pressing a single hotkey. 
Ah right, that appears to be in KM7 
Need to upgrade I guessā¦
I can assure you that the upgrade is well worth the small price. KM 7 brings a multitude of new, powerful features. See KM 7+ New Features. You pay only for major upgrades, like from any version to Ver 7. All of the 7.x updates are at no cost.
1 Like
I have to admit it does sound tempting. I only have version 5 I believe, so am missing out on a lot of features. However these days I barely even use my mac, and mac automation is not something I need often, if at all. Ever since I bought a windows PC I have been moving away from Mac just because of the flexibility windows allows when it comes to automation. My mac is only really used for entertainment purposes nowadays. Iām still here on the forums though, mainly for the community and interesting conversations.
Since we got into a very involved discussion about Mac and Windows automation, I have split all of those posts into a new topic:
See
###Mac vs Windows Automation
I have supposedly saved 25 months.
Intriguingly, the ten macros I have used most have saved me no time. These are mostly little parsing and text extraction tricks I need to support my main macros.
I use KM for a range of things, but I would guess most of the heavy lifting is done by a small group of macros that lift data from an incredibly unfriendly SaaS database and then generate batches of emails, report skeletons and updates.
I assume that KM is calculating the time save typing in this instance, although to be fair I run the macro on a fairly regular basis to refresh something and so it will often be doing a lot of work it has done just a few hours earlier
Iāve been running for it year; 760 times and it managed to save 19 months in that timeā¦
Anyway, thatās automation for you. Iād sooner maltreat my system than my neurones.
I'll take second place!
Fingers crossed that a future business model doesn't involve paying per month saved 
Well, if Peter is willing to spread the payments over three or four thousand years, then it could prove manageable, if you feel youāve got the stamina to push on that long ā¦
Okay, I now understand why I saved so much time for something I use very little. In the past I uploaded videos onto youtube and this was my way of refreshing the page until the youtube video became available. Because the code is terrible (polling) and ultimately a hack it runs whenever I have Safari open xD:
I do have some which are legitimate though! A macro I used to zoom into an online 3d mandelbrot set which scrolled down smoothly 9999 times saved 40 hours. Which is probably true. Another I did use quite a lot was a bot to place wards on league of legendsā¦ xD (A fun experiment) saved another 40 hours. But overall I have used KM really not as often as I thought I had. Which is quite surprising to be honest! The more you knowā¦
Yes, that sort of thing, especially executing a script, will generate a lot of "time saved".
If you think about it, if you had actually ran that script yourself manually every 2 seconds, that's the time that Keyboard Maestro saved. Clearly, the concept is a big bogus at that point, but that's the idea behind what Keyboard Maestro is counting.
If you wish to reset the Time Saved counter, I can track down whatever preference it is set in for you.
You're on the right track really. The best way is to let your macros grow organically, just keep watching for opportunities and your use will grow with time (though hopefully less than 3000 years ;- )
1 Like
Regardless of the estimate made by KM, I personally have not saved any time because I have used KM to replace DragThing. Either program saves a great amount of time compared to tracking down an application or file or folder and opening it. Both programs launch or open the chosen item very quickly.
At the moment, either program will do the job quite well. However, DragThing is a 32-bit program and the developer has stated that he does not intend to develop a 64-bit version. Since Apple has announced that the next version of the Mac OS will not support anything but 64-bit programs, I decided to bite the bullet and install KM now. I have no regrets.
Hey Tom,
Then you need to use your imagination and expand your repertoire of macros. 
-Chris