Hello, Peter and the rest of this amazing community. Hope you're having a good week!
I was thinking of starting a thread where we could suggest new features to KM. Every time I am trying to do something and think, "Ha! I finally found something KM can't do easily!" I usually find a helpful post on these forums showing me how to do it. But not always!
Colors for macros. I have, er, 850 macros in my shared macro file, though many of these will be old ones I retired but didn't delete just in case I needed them for reference. I use keyword in my titles so I can find the ones I need, or search inside.
I sometimes find typed string macros have stopped working, and this is nearly always because I have 1password opened and unlocked. It's a mild annoyance but not a problem to close 1password so I can use my typed strings. But today, it informed me that "Google Chrome" was open and that was causing secure mode to activate. Um, I kind of need Google Chrome all the time?
(Maybe it was because I had logged in to my bank recently. But in no case will any of my macros do any interacting with sensitive infomation like bank related stuff.)
I want an enhancement to KM's Custom HTML Prompt action, perhaps just a flag on the cogwheel, that changes the window so that it passes all keystrokes/clicks through the window so I can display information boxes without interfering with the frontmost application.
I want KM actions that can control HomeKit, with the ability to read information from HomeKit devices, like thermostats.
Voice activated triggers. This may possibly require a standalone app to listen to voice and trigger macros. I don't know how it would be implemented. I have implemented this myself using existing macOS tools, but it wasn't easy to use.
Perhaps portions of ImageMagick incorporated into KM as native actions, to work on clipboards.
An updated version of OCR integration that returns the coordinates of the box where the text was found. This would be extremely useful. I've heard that BTT has managed to do this, so maybe there's an API for it.
There are probably some open-source projects that will render data in 2D and 3D charts in a window. I want to write KM macros that generate 2D and 3D charts with data that I provide them.
While there is a function in KM that returns the system's volume level ("SYSTEMVOLUME()") I would like another function that returns the actual current volume level, based on the volume coming out of the standard audio output device. I've accomplished this by getting KM to interact with Audio Hijack, (and other ways) but it's fairly difficult. I would also like an actual TRIGGER that activates when the system volume reaches a certain decibel level. I've also accomplished this with Audio Hijack, but it was also quite difficult.
Apple now has apps which let the user interact with Apple Intelligence. I would like a built-in KM action that lets the user submit and retrieve data to each of the Mac's AI models. Or if that's not possible, a similar solution would be to let me submit and retrieve data to Siri. The current "Type to Siri" interface is so poor it's not sufficient.
I would like to be able to flag a macro so that it doesn't show up in the Debugger when it's active. The main purpose of the Debugger is to debug macros that don't work, so I don't need to see macros that do work. In fact, each macro group should also have a flag that can disable visibility in the debugger. This would be very helpful to me.
In the KM Editor I can see the names of the macro and their triggers. But I never look at the triggers!!! I would like to replace the trigger with more useful information like (a) how long it has been since it last triggered. Eg, -1 sec, -2 min, -3 hours, -5 days, etc. or (b) the size of the macro in bytes. These things would help me a lot.
I would like a new KM Engine Menu item that produces some statistics, like the number of variables, and their total space consumed, the same thing for dictionaries, and also for clipboards. And also the amount of RAM that the Engine is consuming. In fact, all these things could also be implemented as functions in KM, which would perhaps be even better.
A new function that returns "1" if there's a newer version of KM ready to be installed, or 0 if we are current, or -1 if it couldn't be detected (eg, if the Internet is not accessible.)
Those are just the things that come to the top of my head right now. Do you think they could all be done for the next minor patch?
I wonder if any kind of UI changes would be a good idea. We live in an era when there are suddenly 100+ new automation tools, yet all those fancy pants AI tools can't do what KM can do, or I don't believe they can. But they are designed in a "sexy" way with UI that is up to date with what the masses want. I wonder if the more basic UI that KM uses is a turnoff for new users who are trying it out?
This is, unfortunately, 100% out of Keyboard Maestro's control. Any app can activate secure text input, and no app is allowed to work around it (that would sort of defeat the purpose of secure text input!).
So it doesn't matter what app invoked it, once that mode is active, Keyboard Maestro is in limbo until secure text input is disabled. Sometimes this happens when you close a window, sometimes there's a timer. But again, none of it is under Keyboard Maestro's control, and there's no way around secure text input breaking things when it's active.
One feature I would like to see is a KM Profile system that supports multiple KM environments that can be switched easily (e.g., via a popup list). This would be very useful because it allows you to manage backups, undo changes, and test macros without polluting the variable database, as well as store large numbers of unwanted macros so they do not slow down the KM editor. Best of all, it would still allow users to copy and paste macros or macro groups across multiple profiles using the existing capabilities. The current profile name could then be displayed in the menulet.
While this can currently be achieved using symbolic links of Keyboard Maestro directories, it would be much better if KM explicitly supported multiple profiles.
Even if it is, I don't think that is any reason to upend all the existing users who are used to how the UI has been for, well, essentially ever? Personally, I deeply appreciate Keyboard Maestro's 'basic' appearance and its resolute consistency in it. It's so tiresome all the apps that are constantly redesigning the UI to 'modernise' it or 'make it easier to use', but easier to use for whom? New users won't know where anything is regardless, and now none of the longstanding users know where anything is either.
If I could have one UI wish, it would only be to be able to hide the group and macro columns at will, but this has been requested in the past, and as I understand it would be quite difficult to implement. It would be nice to have, but KM's useability isn't affected in the least by lacking this functionality.
Yes, although, as you know, in the case of BTT the API being used might not be a public one (and therefore would not be adopted for KM).
That would be nice but I think support for such things directly would be a specialised role that is outside KM’s remit. For example making a graph in Mermaid requires Javascript. Could an Execute JavaScript for Automation action be used? Perhaps not… I really need to look into all that properly!
Is there any news on this yet?
I get the impression that it is more of a turnoff for some reviewers…
I suspect that there may be more of an issue of a look of certain critical parts of the documentation, rather than the application, but I won’t go off-topic about that (I have opinions if anyone wants them another time. ).
I would only suggest a few items for the wishlist, and I think that implementing any of them would be completely impractical in the foreseeable future!
A rewrite of the Editor to prevent slowdowns (e.g. when opening several Editor windows).
Undo on a “per macro” basis.
Undo on a “per Editor window” basis.
Ongoing development of “FrontBrowser” tokens to accommodate a wider range of Web browsers.
The option to remove the information panel from the Trigger macro by name action. As I have mentioned here before, I never need to see the information in the panel or the big icon above it, so that panel is no more than visual clutter, and its presence means that the list is off-centre within the screen.
Oh, absolutely. I am 100% fine with KM as it is now, and if it stopped working with future versions of Mac OS, I would stop updating Mac OS forever, and buy seveal laptops so I always had a replacement that ran the current software I needed. Just trying to throw out suggestions since we’re in an interesting age of automation.
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