Long Random Delays in Executing Macros on Sierra Release Candidate

Questions & Suggestions
1

A day after installing the Sierra RC I noticed KM frequently beachballing for 18-20 seconds when executing macros, even very simple application switching ones. Looking at the engine log doesn’t seem to help; the only clue it offers is that it doesn’t say a beachballed macro has been executed up until the moment of its execution (in other words, when I hit a macro’s hotkey while looking at the log, it would show zero new activity until KM stopped beachballing and executed the macro, at which point it displays the usual “Execute macro ‘X’ from trigger Y” message like nothing ever happened). The only other thing I noticed in the log file that seems like it could possibly be related are repeated strings like this:

2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1
2016-09-10 18:46:57 Assertion Failed: theErr != noErr || count < 2000,  file: /Users/peter/Keyboard Maestro/Project/Source/XCAF/XClipboardDataSet.mm:174, value: 0
2016-09-10 18:46:57 PasteboardGetItemCount Error 0 -1

Quitting and restarting the engine multiple times, rebooting my Mac, and uninstalling/reinstalling KM had no effect, and in my personal experience, I’ve used KM dozens if not hundreds of times a day since version 5 on macOS 10.7 and have never run into a problem like this before, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a coincidence that this started happening right after installing Sierra. Has anyone else run into this or similar issues? Any chance this is a known bug that’s already set to be fixed in the next release?

2

Get a sample (Activity Monitor) while it is beach-balling and email it to support@stairways.com

The assertion is asserting exactly what it says PasteboardGetItemCount is returning no error and a count of -1. Sounds like yet another Apple clipboard bug. Keyboard Maestro reports the error and immediately turns it in to an error condition, so it will probably not be the cause of the issue (though when Apple is reporting an item count of -1, who knows what else is going wrong).

3

Well, this is embarrassing. I’ve been keeping Activity Monitor open waiting for KM to start acting up like this again, but it’s been just as rock solid as usual without any change on my part. Whatever the clipboard issue was that presumably caused this, it seems to have cleared up on its own. Figures it would do that right after I posted about it…

If I do catch KM acting like this again, I’ll be sure to send a sample to your support email. Many thanks for responding so quickly (especially on a Sunday; that was not expected, but it was much appreciated) and congrats on the release of KM 7.3!

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