KM keeps opening in the background ... no idea why

Questions & Suggestions
1

Something strange has started happening with KM for me. At several points during the day, the KM app opens. It is in the background, though, like it's been hidden - I only notice that it's open when I fan all open windows out in Exposé and I see the outline of it.

Every time I spot this I think "I must keep an eye on this, see when it next happens" .. but it's opening in the background quieltly, Ninja style.

What would cause the app to open like this? Can the KM engine log reveal how/why it opened?

1 Like
2

The log should show you exactly what happened at the point in time you saw the editor appear—at least, if it's KM doing something to cause that. Did you look at the log file to see what happened around that time?

-rob.

2 Likes
3

To see whether the Keyboard Maestro editor is launching because of a macro, it will probably be enough to search the KM editor for a match for "Keyboard Maestro".

I did also make this little macro but it's probably completely unnecessary!

Every time that Keyboard Maestro is launched, a window will display the most recent entry in the KM log that contains the string "Keyboard Maestro".

Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 14.15.25
Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 14.15.251762×396 40.9 KB

If the time shown is not recent, then the KM engine did not launch the KM editor, and you will have to look for the culprit elsewhere.

As shown, set the trigger to be when Keyboard Maestro launches, and set the Execute Shell Script action to display the result in a window.

Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 14.06.12
Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 14.06.121050×954 130 KB

Here is the shell script to paste into the action:

echo "The Keyboard Maestro editor has been launched.\n\n"
echo "The most recent entry about KM in the KM engine log is:\n"
grep -i "Keyboard Maestro" ~/Library/Logs/Keyboard\ Maestro/Engine.log | tail -1
1 Like
4

As @griffman mentioned, the Engine.log will have an entry if the Keyboard Maestro app is being opened by a macro. Another method that can be used is to configure a smart group and specify a time. For example, to see macros that have run within the last 30 minutes, specify:

used:30m

Of course, there are many other ways that the application could be opened. For example, might you have BetterTouchTool?

1 Like
5

I no longer have that since I stopped using TouchBar Mac. But good suggestion.

6

Thanks folks - I will make it display a message when it launches, then I should be able to tell what caused it. The problem right now, is that it is opening very quietly in the background. I only noticed that it has happened at some point after the event. So displaying a message immediately should track down the source of the problem. :slight_smile: