I am noob to KM however,I've been spending every waking hour attempting to figure out a simple problem…but I give! I also searched and can not find any other Macros that do this and I think this could be helpful to others as well.
I am attempting to Create a very simple Macro that does the following:
In a running instance of Apple Podcasts on a Mac, the user manually goes to a Show, Selects the show and thus displays all Episodes for a Selected Podcast, selects See All and thus displays the entire library of available episodes as shown. I have tried every method I can think of to “Find the image of the three dots”. I just cant find anything that will find and than activate the three dots of even the first episode in the list.
Once that is done, the use selects the first show in the list and from that point KM is called manually via a HotKey and the macro selects the Three Dots on the right,
it selects the ESC or Return arrow to go back to the main list of episodes, Selects Option-Down Arrow which moves focus to the next episode in the list
Are you actually able to navigate Apple Podcasts entirely with the keyboard?
I'm on macOS 15.4.1 and I can't, but I also don't use Apple Podcasts, so maybe I'm doing something wrong because it's either navigating the toolbar icons or the sidebar menu or, if I can manage to get it to navigate down the episode list, it doesn't fully select the next episode. And then when I view the transcript and go back to the list and try to navigate down, it puts me back at the top of the list where the first episode is still highlighted...
There doesn't seem to be any Applescript support for Podcasts.app either. I'm sorry to see Apple Podcasts is still as user-hostile as ever. I'm still thinking on this, but I fear the solution might need to be position-based, maybe others will have some better ideas in the meantime.
Did you upload the right macro? You're asking about Found Image, but your macro is clicking at hard-coded position relative to the front window's corner, which as I already mentioned might be the only way forward unless you're on a different OS or know the secret to Podcasts.app keyboard navigation.
And just to note, while uploading your macro is always helpful, including the macro screenshot can be too. If you feel like your macro image is too big, you can wrap it in details tags to hide it inside a collapsed container.
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Hi,
Thank you for the reply! No, there does not seem to be a keystroke path to what I am attempting to do. At least none that I could find. Being new to KM, I was hoping there was some type of way to visually identify an object on a screen (the three dots). The macro I uploaded was just the Step 1 of trying to go to the three dots and getting the Option Menu to display. I see no other method to get to this Menu. Im ambivalent to any Podcast player however the Apple Podcast player downloads a transcript of the podcast from Apple. I don't think any other player offers such an ability and hence my predicament. Thank you for the additional instructions as well.
R
There most certainly is a way, using the Find Image action, or the Click Mouse at Found Image action. The potential problem is that a three dot image is not always reliable for these actions. "Not always."
But there is a way to fix that. You see, in your images, the three dot icon is always to the right of a couple of other icons. So instead of searching for the three dots, you could search for the other icons and then click a fixed distance to the right of their location.
Another issue to be aware of is the method you use for collecting the image can be crucial. Some people try to copy the image into an app and/or file then paste the image back into a KM action. That often won't work. You may have to copy the image directly to the macOS system clipboard and then paste directly back into a KM macro.
I'm afraid I didn't have time to read your post thoroughly, and I'm off to get groceries right now, so this is all I can contribute for the time being.
Hi Airy,
Good luck on the groceries excursion.
So the operation to start would be "Move and Click at found Image" and use what I stored in System Clipboard which in this case was:
?
And the Macro Action would then be to click the left mouse to the right of the found image?
I didnt see anything that allowed a relative "to the right" type of instruction if Im even on the right path here?
Again, this is not critical and I am brand new to this application. Should this task or I become overly frustrating, its okay, I can always do it by hand. I appreciate your efforts.
R
Thanks for trying! But I see several mistakes. Perhaps I'm responsible for one of your mistakes, based on my incomplete explanation. What I wanted you to do was paste the image into the "image well" if the action, perhaps like this:
Notice that I pasted the image of the two icons into the "image well." That's what I wanted you to do. Look carefully at the other options I picked for my version of the action.
I see you used a "down arrow" icon instead of the two images that I captured. But I don't see that "down arrow" anywhere in your Podcast app window, so I can't understand why you placed that image into the clipboard. You are supposed to place an image that's found in your window, but I can't see where you got your image from.
Also, you aren't supposed to place the absolute coordinates of the image in that action. You should simply place the offset, which in my case, I guessed was 66 pixels to the right. But that's just a guess. You can measure it yourself on your screen.
Also, from personal experience, I recommend that you move the fuzziness bar a little more to the right, like I did.
And I recommend you change the option from "Unique" to "Best".
You can keep the checkmark in the "Display" box for now, which will help you debug this. But once it works, perhaps you can remove that check mark.
I enjoy helping new people with actions like this one, so don't worry about it. I suspect you will get stuck again before it works, but that's okay. There are a lot of moving parts to this action, and it may take a few tries before it works.
Thank you for the continued help. Funny, I was going to include the little "Bookmark"
as well as you did in your example, however the reason I chose not to was that it only displays as a mouse-over unless actually selected as yours is (and mine in this pic).
I figured if I had to select 300 little bookmarks I may as well select "Show Transcript", so I abandoned the idea and used the Arrow only in the macro. I have looked for any method to allow me to "Favorite" all Episodes in a quick keystroke but didn't find anything.
That was my logic anyway....
I am going to go through the rest of your ideas now but just wanted to share that as it seems it may make a difference to the macro construction.
R
I'm slightly concerned about this point. Do you have 300 items that you need to get this macro to run on? I thought you had only a screenful, maybe up to ten. But if you have 300, do you need the macro to scroll the window? This may be possible, but it increases the difficulty, because apps don't always scroll in a logical way. It would really help if you explain these details. Originally I thought you wanted the macro to work on the selected item, but now I'm inferring that you want this macro to work on some larger collection of items.
Airy,
No problem at all. As I am learning KM, I see how not specifying the quantity of episodes would affect the process and thus impact the application...mistakes...I make more than most...but I don't mind
I intended on using this macro on Apple Podcasts which could range from 30 to in the case of this particular podcast that started me down this road...352!
I started clicking "View Transcript" one at a time and got to around 30 before thinking there has to be a better way....ChatGPT led me to Keyboard Maestro which has led to us here. Basically the "Spec" is to run through the full list of a Podcasts Episodes, Selecting each "View Transcript" which inevitably produces (downloads from Apple) a file on the hardrive of the transcript with a .TTML extension. These 300 files will then get dropped into a big super cool converter that spits out a "One big beautiful document" which can then be archived and manipulated to produce awesome categorized data.
R
This was my interpretation of the original post and why I was thinking position-based actions would be the easier approach. An alternative idea I had would be faster to implement but would require the user to manually scroll and click each next episode.
I guess the first step is for you to get the macro to work on a single entry in the Podcast app. Once you get that working, we can then attack the next step, which is going to the next Podcast.
That would be semi-automated, which may be good enough for the user. I think we should target that. However I think a fully automated process is possible, and since Podcasts is an Apple app, I could develop/test it myself. But I think I agree with you that a semi-automated process is the appropriate level for this user.
Exactly. That was my thinking and thus just trying to open the Option Menu and select the proper item.
I also looked around and saw what hemicyon was referring to when it comes to the Apple Podcasts App. not being very friendly for scripting and keystrokes. Seems Ive stumbled on to a very old and well known entity.
R
That is exactly what I am talking about. I think that this level of automation is the best for you at this time. Once you are comfortable with that, we could consider another level of automation, but I want to hold off on that because scrolling can open up a can of worms.
What's the point of this? At this stage, all I can do is view the transcript and copy at best a single screen-full -- there is no download option.
It may be that the option is podcast dependent, so it'll help if you share the podcast you're trying to do this for. If the transcript is downloadable we may be able to work out how the URL is generated and go direct...
I was thinking about a macro that is restricted to Podcasts.app that you trigger once, it can then: 1. wait for you to click a new episode/row; 2. open the transcript; 3. go back to episode list; 4. wait for you to click a new episode/row; and so on until you stop the macro manually.
I was wondering the same thing, then when researching a couple ideas, I stumbled across this tool that can extract podcast transcripts from the locally cached transcript files, but it requires that a transcript is viewed at least once. I guessed this must be OP's objective, if not this specific tool then something like it. However, it seems like the locally cached files might not be saved for very long, so there could well be issues trying to save hundreds at a time.
It also seems to be the case that the tool doesn't work for all podcasts, though why that would be I'm not sure.
So all you need is that tool and a list of podcast episode IDs. Unfortunately, Shortcuts's "Get Episodes of..." action only seem to get the details of the last 10 episodes of a show... I'm hoping someone can show I'm wrong about that -- if not I've got a clunky workround, but it requires Sequoia.
Morning,
Correct tool, not sure why you are getting only 10 episodes? I am able to get as many as I want. I believe their was a departure whereby going to "View Transcript" did as described and brought in a .TTML file use.
R