If Then Else vs. Switch/Case – why e.g no "This application" condition in the latter?

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hi,

why does Switch/Case offer a much smaller set of conditions than If Then Else? Why can't I check for example with Switch/Case if a certain application is running?

Chris

3

The Switch action only does text/clipboard matching rather than generic conditions (otherwise each switch case entry would have to specify the full condition).

It is possible I will add some sort of “else if” clause to the If Then Else action to allow you do do the sort of thing you want, but currently you just have to use nested If Then Else actions.

4

Hey Chris,

You can. You just have to be a little creative.

Download ⇢ Case Construct -- Is App Running?.kmmacros (8.1 KB)

Personally I think Keyboard Maestro's method of getting running app names is overly complicated and would use an Execute an AppleScript action with this code:

tell application "System Events"
   set AppleScript's text item delimiters to linefeed
   return ((name of processes whose background only is false) as text) & linefeed
end tell

Although I'd like to see @peternlewis add a ListRunningApps() token to the Keyboard Maestro lexicon.

-Chris

1 Like
5

I agree. This would be very useful.