How to quickly select macros within an "expandable" Palette

[Willis]

This is a summary of what I have right now:

I have 12 expandable Palettes that only activate when I open up the WhatsApp desktop app.

The Palettes will always sit in the places you are seeing now. When a mouse cursor hovers over the palette, it will expand and show the macros within it. Every palette will always have 4 columns and varying rows (as I add or delete the stickers (aka macros)).

Palette format

When a sticker (aka macro) within the palette is triggered (either by clicking on it and using a hotkey to trigger it), it will select and click on a sticker in the sticker pack and send it to the chat.

Example Macro

Seeing the Macro in Action

To speed the process of selecting stickers, I created two additional macro groups:

1st macro groups:

• Control + Q will activate this macro group for ONE action
• Then, a single letter hotkey is used to trigger each macro within each macro group
• There are 12 palettes, so I have 12 single letter hotkeys to trigger each one
• The actions of these macros are to move the cursor to the palette so that it “expands“ AND it activates the 2nd macro group (that I will explain in a bit)
• As an example, “Control + Q” will activate the 1st macro group → Single letter “Q“ will move the cursor to the first palette, therefore expanding it + 2nd macro group is now activated

Example Macro

Seeing the Macro in Action

Triggers for each palette

2nd Macro groups:

• 2nd Macro group is activated (for ONE action) by the actions of one of the macro of the 1st macro group
• Similarly, for the macros in the 2nd Macro group, a single letter hotkey is used to trigger each macro (stickers).
• I have varying number of stickers (macro) in each palette, and I only have hotkey triggers for first top 12 stickers. This means not all stickers have a hotkey trigger.
• The actions of these macros are to click the corresponding sticker (macro)
• As an example, after the cursor is moved to a palette and expanded it (by the actions of 1st macro group): Single letter “Q” will click on the 1st sticker in the palette. (The whole sequence would be: Control Q → Q → Q)

Example Macro

Seeing the Macro in Action

Triggers for each stickers in a palette

This setup works just fine except for the problems I mentioned above.

@Willis

However, problems arose if I activated the palette and decided not to press a keystroke trigger, which is something that bound to happen, either because it’s a “sticker” (macro) further down the palette list and I don’t have a trigger for that, so I have to click on it. OR I decide not to use the sticker after all. In both scenarios, this will leave the palette activated until I press one of the unmodified keystroke that will trigger the macros, which will interfere with “normal keystrokes “ when I type in the chatbox. Oh so I guess it is a bad idea after all…

But I’m hoping maybe I can get around that by including something in the macros that will deactivate the palettes (hence the “normal” keystroke will no longer be a hotkey trigger) when I do these actions:

1. A mouse click (clicking on a sticker or anything else)
2. Mouse cursor moving away from the palette
3. A single hotkey that deactivates the palette