KM 11 is so slow it's unusable for me (video inside)

Questions & Suggestions
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I love love love Keyboard Maestro and have loved it ever since I first found it back in 2019. So much so that even though I don't actually need/use any of the new features in KM11 (at least, not yet), I still upgraded almost immediately simply because I wanted to support @peternlewis and this amazing tool he's created!

That being said, this "upgrade" has been... a struggle, to put it mildly. The app is now so buggy and slow for me that it is almost completely unusable. Sometimes it's fine, but it's in really rare form tonight. Here's a video showing you what I'm dealing with and the timeline of events for context. (Note: In case it's unclear, this is NOT a KMFAM problem; this is a KM11 problem that affects every single macro. I only used KMFAM as an example at the beginning of the video to demonstrate the problem. As you'll see at the end of the video, it also occurred when running a very simple macro that just simulates a keystroke).

0:01 - I hit ⌘O to run [KMFAM] Favorite Actions and Macros. You can see that the KM icon is spinning in the menu bar, so it's working.

0:50 - I finally gave up and try the shortcut again.

1:41 - I give up and hit ⌘K, which is a very simple macro that simply simulates ⌃⌘A to insert an action by name.

1:53 - The simulated ⌃⌘A keystroke from 12 seconds ago finally registers.

2:11 - The original attempt to run KMFAM (over 2 minutes ago) finally finishes and opens the dialog window.

2:16 - I type the string "menu," which never even shows up in the text field before...

2:25 - ...the second attempt at 0:50 to run KMFAM finally starts doing something, which I didn't realize at first because it wasn't until...

2:29 - ...that the search bar to insert an action by name opened up, which is what happens when KMFAM is already running and you use the hotkey again.

Before recording this video, I checked Activity Monitor and didn't see anything eating up a ton of memory or CPU or anything, so I tried quitting/restarting KM and KM Engine. That didn't make a difference, so I went ahead and rebooted my computer assuming that would fix it, but nope! All to no avail. That's when I decided I can't live like this anymore and recorded the video :joy:

So, any ideas what the heck is going on here? Because I'm honestly about to just give up and go back to KM10 :pensive: Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Specs:

  • M1 Mac Mini
  • Sonoma 14.0
  • Keyboard Maestro 11.0
2

I don't have time to research this right now, but I recommend you change the title of this thread to something like "KMFAM problems with KM 11" or something like that, so you stand a better chance of getting help from other KMFAM users.

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3

I don't have a clue, but KMFAM seems to be working fine on my Mac.

MBP 14 Pro
MacOS Version 13.5.2 (I chose to wait to see whether Sonoma 14 might break some old apps. :sweat_smile:)
Keyboard Maestro 11.0

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Er... yeah, except this is not a KMFAM problem. This is a Keyboard Maestro problem! I only used KMFAM as an example at the beginning of the video to demonstrate. I can't demonstrate every macro, but as the video shows, I also had the same exact problem with a completely unrelated macro that simply simulates a keystroke within Keyboard Maestro (⌘K -> ⌃⌘A). It also happens for every other macro, no matter how simple or complex. It doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it's happening more and more often lately, and it never happened in KM10.

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FWIW no slow-down seen on this system in KM11.

Sonoma 14.0, Apple M2

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Whether relatedly or not, my biggest disappointment with KM11 is that some of my most-used macros, which use a Pause Until Key action, now sometimes take several seconds to recognize the key-press. This happened immediately upon upgrade to KM11 (without changing anything about the macros), and it immediately affected all of my Macs, running multiple OS's.

Also, KM Editor now frequently hangs, requiring a forced quit.

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FWIW2.... I have Apple M1 Macbook with Sonoma 14.0 and KM11... no problems except for submenus which is an Apple issue.

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I've seen a few cases of this, it seems to be a weird corruption in the 1Password third-party integration files.

In 1Password, turn off the integration in the Advanced settings:

image

That should resolve the issue.

If you have already moved to 1Password 8, the option isn't there. You can use 1Password 7 to turn it off, or you'll need to ask 1Password support how to turn it off if you no longer have it.

You should then be able to turn the integration back on and I believe that will rebuild the integration files without the corruption.

The next version of Keyboard Maestro should have some mitigation for this, avoiding 1Password entirely if you do not use the action.

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9

Are you saying the 1Password integration problem is also behind the enormous lag in recognizing key presses?

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Potentially. Basically, for some people the 1Password exported bookmarks seem to have some really weird corruption that makes just looking at the bookmark contents take a long time (possibly a very long time, possibly just a long time). I don't know what the issue is, maybe a recursive directory structure, or some weird xattr issue, I have no idea. And so when Keyboard Maestro looks for the bookmarks (which it does any time it needs to look at a New Action, which can include any time the menu bar is updated to handle command keys for example) then it can get in a state that is essemntially locked up or almost locked up. I don't entirely understand the cause of it, only how to resolve it.

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Okay, thanks, but then what would be an aspect of KM11 that makes the 1Password problem evident, when earlier KM versions were not noticeably affected?

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I don't specifically know.

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I found two posts on the 1Password site where the founder of 1Password discusses this issue, and in the second post even mentions Keyboard Maestro by name. His first post starts to address the subject:

And here's the second post:

(make sure you read all the way to the end of the page)

In summary, he says that if integration "is critical to your workflows, please use 1Password 7." ... "It's a great app and you can dive into 1Password 8 once we're able to add 3rd party app integration."

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14

Can you please elaborate on this? I'm facing a lot of slowdown for general menu selection in Mail through KM 11.

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Hi... and welcome to the discourse..

the "submenus" issue I'm referring to doesn't slow things down it just plain doens't work until Apple fixes it. Here is the link to the discussion..

Submenus in Sonoma

Dave

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There is another issue in Sonoma I was just reminded about .

In Sonoma, the menus were completely rewritten, and the menu selection API now waits for the target application to complete the action, which can result in a long delay (potentially very very long), and this locks up Keyboard Maestro Engine while it waits.

I believe this will be fixed in an upcoming version of Sonoma.

In the mean time, since the Keyboard Maestro Engine is locked up, there really isn't anything that can be done to work around the issue (for example, setting the action timeout will not help).

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I am also experiencing this slowdown. I noticed it yesterday with a macro that I use to navigate my journal notes that I create and store in the bear app. I am enclosing a couple of videos recorded doing the same thing:

  1. KM 10 Fast Recording
  • the fast one is running on my MacBook Pro which is still running KM 10
  1. KM 11 Slow Recording
  • the (very) slow one is running on my Mac Studio which I have upgraded to KM 11.

[Edit: the first link actually shows both machines running in parallel which is pretty useful, so no need for the second link - first time using iimgur]

To the best of my knowledge the machines are otherwise the same running the same versions of OS and apps except for KM:

Studio: Apple M1 Max / Ventura 13.6.1 / KM 11.0.2
MacBook Pro: Apple M1 Pro / Ventura 13.6.2 / KM 10.2

What is happening in the videos: You will see a navigation palette, center-bottom, that I built in KM. Each time that I press the - to the left of Today the displayed journal notes shift one to the right and a new note is added on the far left. In this way the date range starts one day earlier. The underlying macros are straightforward using calculations for today’s date and window position, then opening the resulting 5 notes via individual shell calls to bear. I haven’t updated this set of macros in many months.

I noted the observation in this forum about 1Password being a possible culprit, and I am running 1Password 8 which has no settings to toggle 3rd party integrations, so I reached out to Agile Bits, the developer.

They assured me that they are (still) not using these integrations in 8 as you had indicated was the case in your posts from the 1Password community - and so there is nothing to disable:

Do you still have 1Password 7 on your device? If not, there is nothing to disable. Your email would seem to indicate that you do not. Without the 1Password 7 application, no integrations are enabled, and nothing should run. In 1Password 8, we do not even make use of those. So again, nothing to disable.

He then went on to give me some things to do to see if my move from Intel to Apple Silicon (which didn't happen recently) caused any problems. I will follow those steps and report back, but I wanted to get a partial response out regarding 1Password 8 and its lack of integrations.

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I don't see any question in your last post, so I don't know what you want me to say. Are you trying to use KM with 1Password version 8? The Founder of 1Password said don't do that.

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Fair enough - there is no question.

I did read all the posts on the 1Password forum that you linked to, and what I understood from that was - if the integrations are important to you, then go back to 1 Password 7. I am not aware of any need on my part for these integrations, so I was trying to stick with 1Password 8 since that is what I have on all my devices.

As an aside, I do use a 1Password workflow in Alfred: GitHub - alfredapp/1password-workflow: Search and open 1Password items without issue with 1Password 8. I don't appreciate the details of the integrations but that definitely works with 1Password 8 for me so there must be some other mechanism (op-bookmarks??) being used.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and I apologize if it came across that way, I was just trying to not have to regress on all fronts. At this point my knowledge would indicate that the easiest path forward for me, right now, would be to regress to KM 10 until this issue is fully understood and resolved. I was just adding my own experience in case it can be of any help leading to an outcome where up to date versions of KM and 1P can coexist.

Thanks.

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You were very polite. And I re-wrote my previous post several times before I felt sure that I was also being polite. Writing clearly and politely and constructively is always challenging.

If that works, that's great news. But I'm surprised that KM works at all with 1P8 because the Founder of 1P said 1P8 was not yet designed to co-exist with anything. As the Founder said, if you want to be on the bleeding edge, use 1P8, but if you want stability and compatibility, use 1P7.

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