Macro is triggering itself... How to make it stop?

[mushoo]

So I’ve got a very simple macro - basically I want to take a keystroke that I use regularly in a program, and add one extra action to it. So, when I press the Tab key, I want to send the application the Tab key, and then also a mouse click. However, when I run it, that ‘send Tab key press’ action just triggers the macro itself again, and it gets locked into an annoying click loop. I’ve tried Semaphore locking (which is a little confusing to me), but it’s not working so perhaps I’m doing something wrong there. Any thoughts?

[pctechtv]

Could you let me know what happens (just to test) what happens if you make your hot key a different one. For instance make pressing Shift Tab send the Tab and Mouse click. Tell me if it is still doing it?

[pctechtv]

Because think about if Tab is sending Tab… that is Keyboard Maestro is so good… I thinking it is an obvious loop because Keyboard Maestro makes the computer think it is a press. So the press is triggering the press… a recursive cycle (loop). Even try not using Tab in the hot key. What is your result then?

[Tom]

Try this:

Same Shortcut for Trigger And Type Keystroke Action Without Loop

Use a USB Device Key trigger - it will detect the keystroke but will not interfere with its normal processing.

…or this:

Same Shortcut for Trigger And Type Keystroke Action Without Loop

Simple solution I found was to disable the macro, fire the keystroke, and enable the macro. That did the trick, and it didn’t cause any loop!

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An example for the latter:

[test] Tab trigger and Tab action.kmmacros (3.2 KB)

[mushoo]

Interesting Tom, I’d tried something along those lines but not QUITE in that configuration. I’ll try that method, and the USB Device Key one, seems like those should work!