I’ve been trying out KM (v8.0.4) for a few days and I notice in the last few days I’ll go have dinner, come back and wake up my monitor and for some reason the Keyboard Maestro Editor window is open. This has probably happened the last 4 or 5 days in a row. I can’t see or find anywhere that I have set that to happen (running macOS 10.12.6 BTW), but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to stop it. It’s not a big deal. but it’s annoying. Any suggestions on why this is happening?
It’s plausible it is a macro, or it is plausible it is something else entirely doing it.
If it is a macro, after it happens, select your All Macros smart group, and then sort your macros by Date Used (View ➤ Sort Macros by ➤ Date Used). Check the recently used macros and see if any of them might have brought the editor to the front.
Ah! That’s the problem. KM does not allow dinner breaks. LOL
(just kidding of course)
You might also check the KM Engine log immediately when you discover the KM Editor has been opened in your absence. GoTo menu Help > Open Logs Folder, or just open this file:
~/Library/Logs/Keyboard Maestro/Engine.log
At the bottom you should see entries for the recent macros and other activity.
Thanks for the suggestions…I will try them tonight if the Editor appears again (after dinner - LOL)
Maybe it’ll appear, like Banquo, AT the feast, not after 
Why haven’t you opened a new topic?
That means that at least one of your macros has an action that is based on a custom plugin “Wrap Text”, and that plugin is either missing or it is not compatible with KM8.
The plugins are located here:
~/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro/Keyboard Maestro Actions
If the plugin is there, then update it or remove it. If you remove it then you should also remove the corresponding action(s) from your macros.
If it is not there, then install it or remove the orphaned action(s) from your macros.
I don’t know if this related to the plugin issue. There is a very similar thread here, also about missing plugins, and this message is also mentioned. So, quite possible that it is related. Fix the plugin issue and then see if the “old engine” message still appears.
Note:
The post wehre this answer belongs to has been deleted and recreated here.
I’ve got this issue too. Each morning when I come back to my computer the Editor window is open.
Looked at last triggered Macros and there’s nothing in there that would cause it. Nothing discernible in the log either.
@BobRudge - Not sure if you have a typo - but in my case it was the “Editor” window that was open every evening.
Also, I had to restart my Mac yesterday morning due to a different software install, wouldn’t you know it - the KBM Editor window did not pop up last evening! Maybe try a reboot? I will keep a watch out and report back here if it starts doing it again.
…and 10 seconds ago I was sitting here and the Editor just opened up on its own…just about 24 hours after I rebooted yesterday (uptime says 24 hours and 2 minutes).
As far as Macros - I sorted them by Date Used and the last one was my F13 key used to call up “Calculator” which I last used a few days ago (is there a way to display when a macro was specifically last used?)
Looking at the Engine.log, the last few entries are:
2017-12-20 09:10:12 Engine Quitting
2017-12-20 09:13:10 Engine Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-20 09:13:10 Old engine details remains a running process Running Engine Details/1018
2017-12-20 09:13:11 Daemon launched by login window. Initiating login actions.
2017-12-20 09:15:32 Running application query took a while (3552 us)
I notice quite a few of these:
2017-12-17 12:36:15 Running application query took a while (10067 us)
2017-12-17 12:37:33 Running application query took a while (3008 us)
2017-12-18 07:00:59 Running application query took a while (3504 us)
2017-12-18 10:38:48 Running application query took a while (3065 us)
2017-12-18 10:43:18 Running application query took a while (6642 us)
2017-12-18 11:27:29 Running application query took a while (3280 us)
2017-12-18 11:27:29 Running application query took a while (3603 us)
2017-12-18 11:27:29 Running application query took a while (3232 us)
2017-12-18 16:22:18 Running application query took a while (6834 us)
2017-12-18 17:57:13 Running application query took a while (13538 us)
2017-12-19 07:46:29 Running application query took a while (3070 us)
2017-12-19 09:27:20 Running application query took a while (3178 us)
2017-12-19 10:27:20 Running application query took a while (3502 us)
2017-12-19 11:28:10 Running application query took a while (3583 us)
2017-12-19 11:41:08 Running application query took a while (9577 us)
2017-12-19 12:42:20 Running application query took a while (4291 us)
2017-12-19 13:12:21 Running application query took a while (3319 us)
2017-12-19 15:19:32 Running application query took a while (7334 us)
2017-12-20 05:27:30 Running application query took a while (4052 us)
2017-12-20 06:53:02 Running application query took a while (4102 us)
None of that seems to indicate what’s going on to me…
Where the heck would I find some 24 hour timer in KBM?
EDIT:
Just looked at the Editor.log - the last few lines are:
2017-12-14 17:18:26 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-14 17:18:26 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-14 17:18:28 Engine is already running
2017-12-14 23:17:06 Running application query took a while (8140 us)
2017-12-15 07:25:47 Editor Quitting
2017-12-15 17:18:29 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-15 17:18:29 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-15 17:18:31 Engine is already running
2017-12-15 17:21:48 Editor Quitting
2017-12-16 17:18:32 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-16 17:18:33 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-16 17:18:34 Engine is already running
2017-12-16 20:56:55 Editor Quitting
2017-12-17 17:18:35 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-17 17:18:36 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-17 17:18:37 Engine is already running
2017-12-17 17:36:04 Editor Quitting
2017-12-18 17:18:39 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-18 17:18:39 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-18 17:18:46 Engine is already running
2017-12-18 17:55:25 Editor Quitting
2017-12-19 17:18:42 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-19 17:18:42 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-19 17:18:50 Engine is already running
2017-12-19 18:26:46 Editor Quitting
2017-12-21 09:13:15 Editor Starting 8.0.4
2017-12-21 09:13:16 Failed to find any 1Password bookmarks-default.json file
2017-12-21 09:13:18 Engine is already running
So it looks like some interaction with 1Password??? How are those two apps talking to one another? I haven’t linked them in any way I know of.
See here:
I also have the “1Password” line in my log, so I don’t think it is related to your issue.
See here:
Have you already checked if you have some KM-related launch agents/daemons running?
The most common locations are these:
# User
~/Library/LaunchAgents
# Global
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
# System (should contain only system stuff)
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
Or get the very useful LaunchControl app.
Check those locations and see if there is something KM-related there.
If it runs every day then it should contain something like this:
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>86400</integer>
or this:
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>17</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>00</integer>
</dict>
Don’t remove or modify agents/daemons if you don’t know where they belong to!
I’ll take a look in those places…I don’t think any Launch Agent would have a hard-set hour number in it since it seems to be launching every 24 hours from the last bootup. Used to be between 4 and 6 PM, and today was at 9AM (since yesterday morning’s reboot). I’ll see if it launches again tomorrow at around 9AM and I’ll know it’s a “24 hours from last startup” thing.
No need for a hard-set hour.
This example agent should do exactly what you are describing:
- It does not launch at reboot
- It does launch every 24h after the reboot
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>local.job</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Applications/Keyboard Maestro.app/Contents/MacOS/Keyboard Maestro</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<false/>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>86400</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
9:13 AM this morning the Editor popped up - just like clockwork…every 24 hours from last reboot/startup of KBM (I have KBM set to start on login).
Last Macro used was my Calculator one that was last used Dec 11th, so that’s not it.
Looked in all the suggested “Launch” folders - saw nothing related to KBM in any of them.
This is really baffling…
Other than “something else is deciding to launch Keyboard Maestro”, which I have seen in the past as a cause for this sort of thing, about the only other case I can think of for Keyboard Maestro spontaneously launching the editor would be if it thought it was unregistered and running out of the trial time - but then it should display the nag dialog and so it would only be if the engine thought it was unregistered but the editor thought it was registered or some other confusion like that.
Interesting - no nag screen…
Since I only used KBM to be able to map my F13 key to the calculator app anyway (why I was trying it out in the first place), I have found a “free” way using an Automator Service and mapping that to the F13 key through keyboard preferences. I can now get rid of KBM. Thanks to everyone trying to help me solve this though.
this problem is still occurring to me after completely removing all related files. What the hell is going on here??
Sorry for your problems, but it is highly unlikely this is due to KM.
I believe this is your first post about this issue, so could you please be more specific about what behavior you are seeing?
Think about what other automation tools your have, like Automator Workflows, Hazel, Alfred, LaunchBar, etc. Do you have any tool which can launch an app at a specific time?
KM could do this, but you would have had to created a KM macro that does this. You can check to see if KM has triggered a macro by examining the KM Engine Log immediately after the KM Editor has launched. See GoTo menu Help > Open Logs Folder, or just open this file:
~/Library/Logs/Keyboard Maestro/Engine.log
i’ve been using KM for quite some time. The reason this is my first post is because I HATE wasting my time writing responses to people like you.
I’ve already spent hours analyzing my logs. I have the ‘1Password’ message showing up as others here (or in another similar thread wrote about). There is no macro that is doing this.