I'm just playing with the new Progress Bar Action in KM 10 and it looks really good.
But the title of the Progress Bar does not seem to be able to cope with a Variable as the text?
The titles of Prompt for User Input and many other text fields in Keyboard Maestro can contain Variables so I might just be doing something wrong. Here is a quick screenshot of the action:
I would expect the title of the Progress Bar to contain the value or the Variable but instead it displays:
Yep. @peternlewis will need to comment.
It's either a) a Bug because of the token area associated with it which denotes that it can use a variable or b) it was designed to only use a user input. I'm hoping it's a.
KC
I'm getting the same results, even having tried inserting the token directly form the token dropdown menu next to the title area.
As there is a dropdown to the right of the field, that implies that tokens can be used, my money is on this is a bug rather than by design 
I don’t have access to my Mac right now so this is a long shot: click the gear icon on the action and see if there’s an option like “process tokens”. If there is that might be the solution.
It's probably a bug if it is not processing tokens. I'll check it out as soon as I can.
v10 is Great Peter, Thank You!
Along the same lines - I have noticed this bug, but was also wondering about the possibility of adding a "Subtitle" to the 'Display Progress' action like with the 'Notification' action. I could put additional information in the Title, but depending on the length it gets cut off. This is probably a personal preference - to have the Subtitle, just figured I'd make the suggestion.
Thanks again!
Aside from the issue with not displaying a variable name, I'm not clear how to use this new feature. Can someone point me in right direction?
As background, I've always used version 9 regular notifications to monitor a loop counter in a macro. I have a variable called "increment" which increments by 1. Every time it increments, I have the variable value appear in a notification. With several seconds pauses between increments, there's plenty of time to see the notification.
With the new progress bar, I'm not sure how to use it. I see it defaults to '50'. Is that 50%? if so, 50% of what? Do I put the progress bar in the increment loop I mentioned earlier? What is it measuring? If I have it as part of a repeat loop, shouldn't there be a way to indicate the upper value so it knows what percentage of the variable has been reached?
Here's another issue. I used the command "Cancel all Macros", when the progress bar didn't do what I expected. The macro cancelled, but the window with the progress bar remained on the screen. Shouldn't it disappear when the macro is cancelled or do I need to explicitly somehow tell KM to close the notification?
I'm excited about the new version 10. But it's a new learning curve regarding new features.
I think the way to use it is to put it at points in your Macro and set a percentage to what you would guess. So... if I had 3 points in the Macro I wanted to report on I would put the first one at 33%, the second at 66% and the last at 100%.
The percentage is just visually what you want to show for the bar when it is called.
When each of these points is reached the Progress Bar is fired and it closes the previous Progress Bar.
I tried the same thing at first, but a further reading of the instructions says that once the progress bar is 100% it will auto-close. And this is true. So, for the last steps I think you would actually use 99% then a pause Action (so you can see the bar reach the end) then 100% to close the Progress Bar.
Hi @weatherguy,
I have created a macro example for you. Take a look at the action group marked in green. I have disabled one of the green groups. You only need to use one of them.
Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate your explanation and its function and use is quite different than I had thought!
But I still think a "Cancel all Macros" command should close the this window, if one aborts a KM macro. A progress bar assumes that you're there to see it work.
If not, there should be an option to leave the notification window open. Or an option that closes it when the macro is completed.
It's otherwise cumbersome to use and I'm not sure how to specify KM to close it at the end of a macro.
I guess I need to play with it. Thanks for sending me in the right direction.
You set it to 100% and it closes
I think I got it. Martin's macro example was extremely helpful and, as recommended by Zabobon, I have added to my "cancel macro" a command to set the progress window to 100. Works well. Thank you, guys!
I think part of what threw me initially is that the default value of "50" is in an entry field that looks too small to enter your own variable or anything more than two characters. But I see that I can paste a variable, per Martin's example, in that field.
Done for the next version.
I removed my post. I had thought there was still an issue with variables. But it's all fixed. I got stung by a hidden carriage return in a string variable that prevented it from being displayed.
Hey Glen,
Unfortunately that happens and can be very difficult to detect.
When I'm troubleshooting I often use this sort of construct:
Because the display text action actively trims whitespace if you don't, and you won't see it.
Note the newline symbol in the variable assignment action – sometimes that visual cue is all you need.
-Chris
Thank you. That's very helpful! I've gotten stung with undetected-unintended carriage returns in string variables more times than I can remember!
