Is there a way to search macros based on trigger (specifically Hotkey)?
E.g. I want to find all my macros that include the modifiers ⌘⇧⌥ in the hotkey trigger.
Typing one or more glyphs in the search filed or in a smart group criterium doesn’t work (the search is not limited to the trigger and actually I’m not completely clear about the scope of a search).
On a side note: while playing with smart groups I mangled the “All Macros” filter. It should be “all:” but just want to be sure, is that correct?
It would be probably safer (to users like me at least ) to have an unchangeable “All Macros” group like we have a default “Global Macro Group”, a place where you’re sure you can see/select/export all of your macros.
Unfortunately there is not a token to specify a hotkey trigger search. (Personally I’d love to see Peter add one.)
BUT searching for the correct glyphs should generally get you there:
⌃⌥⇧⌘
⌘M
⌃⌥⇧⌘M
When I first started testing this I found I had an incorrect glyph for Control, but once I fixed that the search field and smart searches responded just fine.
Search is restricted to the selected macro-groups.
Smart Searches are global unless you tell them otherwise:
group:“Global Macro Group” ⌃⌥⇧⌘
Searches will find macros where the given character glyphs show up in actions in addition to macros where they are part of the trigger string, so you may end up with a false-positive or three – but there shouldn’t be too many.
Another tip for searching when you don’t know where a macro is…
Hi Chris,
thanks for your reply.
I think I spotted the problem: I wasn’t separating the glyphs with a space.
“⌘⌥⌃” doesn’t return nothing while “⌘ ⌥ ⌃” seems to work (still have to check and in any case I have a lot of false positives).
The search operate on macros only so you also miss the hotkeys used to open group palette in case you’re doing a search, as I am, to see which hotkeys are already assigned.
I agree that would be nice to see an improvement in this area.
PS
I’m using the following Unicode entities (decimal codes)
Yes, we're using the same glyphs; you listed them using Hex codes while I used the Decimal ones.
As for the separating spaces I'm a bit confused; I got completely different results with or without them (see screenshots when using only two of them).
The problem is that there is a canonical order for the modifiers for the hot keys, specifically:
⌃, then ⌥, then ⇧, then ⌘
Keyboard Maestro, being astoundingly clever (ok, really just being at version 7 and developed over many years with many small improvements) automatically orders your search in the macro search field in the canonical order. So when you search in the main search field, for “⌘⇧⌥”, Keyboard Maestro actually searches for “⌥⇧⌘”.
Unfortunately, this extra bit of intelligence is not in the Smart Groups search (until the next version!), so a Smart Group search for ⌘⇧⌥ will generally find nothing, whereas a smart group search for ⌥⇧⌘ will find what you are looking for.
Unfortunately, that is true of the main search filter, but not the smart groups (for now).
I have added canonicalising code to the Smart Groups search, and I will see if I can add a trigger: search tag, and some way to stop the All Macros Smart Group from being modified.
This I can’t do much about, search will not search for macro groups.
@johseb,
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) to have an unchangeable “All Macros” group like we have a default “Global Macro Group”, a place where you’re sure you can see/select/export all of your macros.
