Keyboard Maestro 9

Announcements
1

Keyboard Maestro version 9.0 adds support for Dark Mode, multiple editor windows, JSON, OCR, Stream Deck, and extended regex, as well as adding triggers, many actions, more palette themes, enhancing the editor and the clipboard switcher, improving performance, and more.

Keyboard Maestro 9.x requires OS X El Capitan 10.11.0 or later.

Version 9 is a paid upgrade for everyone who purchased before 1 February 2019.

Version 9 is a free upgrade for anyone who purchased after 1 February 2019.

Major Changes in 9.0

  • Support multiple editor windows.
  • Support Dark Mode (requires 10.14+).
  • Added JSON support.
  • Added OCR support.
  • Added extended Regex support.
  • Added support for Stream Deck.
  • Hardened Runtime. Notarized.
  • Requires OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later.

Dark Mode Support (requires 10.14+

  • Support Dark Mode.
  • Added Dark Mode preference (System, Light or Dark).
  • Added Set/Toggle System Dark Mode actions.
  • Added Set/Toggle Keyboard Maestro Dark Mode actions.
  • Added DARKMODE and KMDARKMODE functions.

JSON Support

Stream Deck Support

Extended Regex Support

  • Support \U, \u, \L, \l and \E in token fields including Search & Replace fields.
  • Support named capture groups (${name}) in regular expression replacement fields (10.13+).

Editor Enhancements

  • Support multiple editor windows.
  • Support for Increased Contrast.
  • Support contextual menu in Macros column.
  • Support contextual menu in Macro Groups column.
  • In the Insert Action/Token/Function by Name windows, Option-Double Click, and Option-Return open the wiki help. (forum)
  • Dragging a folder in to a macro now creates an Open Folder action.
  • Dragging a workflow into a macro now creates an Execute an Automator Workflow action.
  • Use VarName as the default variable name in more places.
  • Changed “Import Macros Disabled…” menu name to “Import Macros Safely…” to avoid confusion.
  • Added a Sort Disabled Macros to Bottom option.
  • Select from Recently Executed now focuses on Macros Column/Macro in non-Edit mode.
  • Added macros to Spotlight index (requires 10.13+). (forum)
  • Adjust macro name / trigger column resizing to allow for longer trigger names.
  • Better display of invalid calculations in the editor. (forum)
  • No display of calculation errors in the editor if the issue is only that a Local or Instance variable has no value. (forum)
  • Large Text setting now affects resizable text views in actions.
  • Added hidden preferences to allow setting the font/size of text views in actions, including fixed width script fonts.
  • Added Toolbar labels to enhance accessibility.
  • Enhanced the Interactive Help with further support for when a macro is triggered but not doing what you want.
  • Added detection of Mojave accessibility setting bugs to the Interactive Help system (sigh).

Engine Enhancements

  • Added Display Layout Changed trigger.
  • Added Iconaholic Rotate status menu icon.
  • Added default Clipboard Filters group.
  • Support sorting the Applications Palette by launch date.
  • Preserve DPI of images in image actions. (forum)
  • Add “real-time” recording mode. (forum)
  • Avoid copying as PDF in Microsoft apps (Microsoft apps are still slow on first copy while starting the RTF engine).
  • Avoid copying many different image formats on the clipboard, only save TIFF and PNG formats.
  • Support “Place Under Mouse” in Clipboard History Switcher.
  • Large Text setting now affects Quick Look and Display Text in Window plain text size.
  • Support button keys with or without command keys in Prompt For User Input windows with no text fields. (forum)
  • Added JavaScript in Front Browser script condition. (forum)
  • Treat clipboard entries with file references to images as images.
  • Add Large Text Display period to the Set Action Delay action settings.
  • Support the AppleScript “windows” property returning all the panel windows in the Engine. (forum)
  • Triggering a macro will not necessarily cancel a conflict palette or “for once” palette. This may change in the future.

New Palette Themes

  • Added Dark Mode palette theme.
  • Added Mojave Night palette theme. (forum)
  • Added Blue Lagoon palette theme.
  • Added Blue Night palette theme.
  • Added Purple Dream palette theme.
  • Added Orange Light palette theme.
  • Added enhanced custom palette theme with gradient options. (forum)
  • Added an option to center or not center the text in palette themes. (forum)

Clipboard Switcher Enhancements

  • If multiple items are selected in the Clipboard Switcher, Command-C merges them into the system clipboard.
  • If multiple items are selected in the Clipboard Switcher, Command-V merges and then pastes them.
  • If multiple images are selected, merging them creates a single larger image (horizontally or vertically, depending on the separator).
  • Added a contextual menu to select the Multiple Clipboard Separator.
  • If a single item is selected in the Clipboard History Switcher, command-C sets the system clipboard to it.

New Actions

Speed Enhancements

  • Improved launch speed, especially with multiple editor windows.
  • Improved speed displaying the All Macros group with large numbers of macros.
  • Improved Clipboard History display speed and memory usage with lots of large images.
  • Improved Clipboard History save/load speed with lots of large images.
  • Improved Named Clipboard save/load speed with lots of large images.

Minor Enhancements

  • Added “web” and “website” as a search synonym for Open a URL and Get a URL actions.
  • Added “load” and “save” as search synonyms for Read a File and Write to a File actions.
  • Added “create” and “directory” as search synonyms for New Folder action.
  • Added “annotate” as search synonyms for Composite onto Image action.
  • Added “dialog” and “window” as search synonyms for Alert and Prompt for User Input actions.
  • Added “Insert Styled Text by Pasting” to action insertion lists.
  • Added hidden preference settings to configure the fonts in scripts, HTML, JSON and Comment actions.
  • Added options to match applications based on just Bundle ID (rather than Path & Bundle ID).
  • Expanded hex character tokens to include emoji (eg %01F300%).
  • Adjusted Filter Percent Encode for URL to encode all non-alphanumeric characters.
  • Adjusted Search the Web action to token expand the Title field. (forum)
  • Default shell environment to UTF-8 if not explicitly set.
  • Changed Application trigger to set TriggerValue to the path of the application. (may break macros)
  • Include Smart Groups in macro selector popup menu.
  • Trigger Macro by Name action initial search now processes tokens.
  • Adjusted Comment action to enable automatic link detection.
  • Adjusted Insert Styled Text by Pasting and Display Text action to enable automatic link detection.
  • Adjusted the palette displays slightly, de-bolded the content text and added some space. (forum)
  • Disabled Smart Copy/Paste in most text fields. (forum)
  • Attempt to better support control over Smart Quote/Dash/Link Substitution/Detection.
  • Detect AppleScript errors and abort/fail the Execute an AppleScript action. (may break macros)
  • Detect Shell script errors and abort/fail the Execute a Shell Script action. (may break macros)
  • Detect Plug In script errors and abort/fail the Plug In action. (may break macros)(forum)
  • Avoid New Folder action failing in the case where the folder already exists.
  • Improve error display of text script errors (remove long extraneous temporary path).
  • Hidden Windows show slightly dimmed text in the Window Switcher.
  • Handle kmtrigger: URLs with bogus slash (/) at the end added by Word.
  • Worked around Google Chrome’s stupid window title accessibility issue. (forum)
  • Worked around Safari 12.1 not disabling the Stop menu when the page is finished loading (radar 49309868).
  • Worked around an issue with dates and times not being localized in Mojave. (CFBundleAllowMixedLocalizations)
  • Support Brave and Vivaldi browsers as a Chrome-compatible Front Browser. (forum)
  • Rate-limit Named Clipboard Change notifications.
  • Rate-limit Allow JavaScript from Apple Events notifications.
  • Improved Search Using Regular Expressions to indicate invalid variables in red. (forum)
  • Invalid variables that are entered in various fields and show up red will not be saved.
  • Improve error display of calculation errors. (forum)
  • Added primary trigger to Macro Inspector / Trigger Macro by Name windows.
  • Adjusted the Continue/Retry Loop action icon to a Control Flow icon instead of a Stop icon.
  • Adjusted the Share to Forum default name to be less verbose. (forum)
  • Detect Universal Clipboards and display a network icon as the source.
  • Removed support for signatures in Send Mail Message action as Mail.app’s signature support is broken.
  • Detect more Audio Output Device changes. (forum)

Fixes

  • Fixed Revert to interact properly with Undo/Redo. (forum)
  • Fixed the title of the Set Action Delay action. (forum)
  • Fixed a crash if the engine is launched via a .kmtrigger file.
  • Fixed the non-edit display of the Macro condition.
  • Fixed the non-edit display of the Modifiers condition.
  • Fixed the non-edit display of the Text condition.
  • Fixed performance issue with Word Count user manual section filter. (forum)
  • Fixed an issue where the “ends with” condition fails if the end string is also in the middle of the string. (forum)
  • Fixed an issue where macro groups that were inactive and then had their configuration changed would not necessarily activate.
  • Fixed an issue with Prompt With List action not showing as much as possible of long entries.
  • Fixed an issue with gestures of a single diagonal direction being allowed.
  • Fixed an issue with the character selection menu highlighting in the Icon Chooser Character display.
  • Fixed an issue with highlighting display of truncated names in Window Switcher.
  • Fixed an issue when running a macro from the editor immediately after making a change.
  • Fixed an issue where Conflict Palettes could not use the key they were triggered with. (forum)
  • Fixed Command-V in the search field in the Clipboard Switcher.
  • Fixed a crash in ThemedPaletteMatrixCell when the entry is tracking the mouse but the palette changes.
  • Fixed an issue with the Prompt for File action not honouring the file types. (forum)
  • Fixed an issue where the editor window would hide if you selected Help from a Insert By Name window. (forum)
  • Fixed Icon Chooser sorting applications case sensitively.
  • Fixed an issue with Enable/Disable macros resulting in a delay in operation of Typed String trigger. (forum)
  • Fixed Break From Loop, Retry This Loop, Continue Loop actions considering a Group to be a loop. (forum)
  • Fixed an issue with Emoji character transparency in palettes. (forum)
  • Fixed Get Touch Bar Selection action to properly handle Code__Title options. (forum)
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To upgrade, simply select Check for Update in the Keyboard Maestro menu. Note that while Keyboard Maestro saves your macro file at that point, if you want to later revert to version 8 you will need to follow the process outlined in the How do I user manual section.

To purchase an upgrade, you can select Purchase Keyboard Maestro Upgrade from the Keyboard Maestro menu. Or just wait and instructions will be emailed to you over the next few days.

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