So for some reason, "match by path" doesn't seem to be working in Keyboard Maestro 10.2 in Ventura 13.3.1, and I noticed that I have to select the application twice to have it show the path. Is there something I am doing wrong here? I have yet to time test selecting this twice.
I had to duplicate an application to get it to have multiple copies run:
so selecting by ID would probably select the same application.
You're making some perhaps unwarranted assumptions...
It looks like you're actually running more than one version of the same app at once and that's generally a no-no on macOS.
Try installing actual different versions of the same app and then experimenting.
Thanks @ccstone for the tips. I don't know all the issues that duplicating the same version does. I had reached out to the developer and they said the software could only run once or you have to process them all at the start so I found duplicating them actually allowed me to process several things separately and it seems to be working.
I am really confused though why the path has issues since I thought that is the purpose of that option and of course the applications are named differently so I would think that Keyboard Maestro would keep the path but that didn't seem to stick. I wonder if @peternlewis knows why when I select the same app twice the full path shows up in the name and what that is doing.
I just showed the package content and changed the Info.plist to a different version for each one even though they are the same version. I hope that doesn't mess anything up and allows the path to finally stick. This seems like an odd workaround if it does work. Not sure if that is what you had in mind @ccstone with the CotEditor. Thanks for all the help!
This is almost invariably unwise. For example, if you were to run two copies of the Keyboard Maestro editor at once the changes would stomp all over each other at best, or at worst corrupt various files. And I would expect that of many other applications.
What do you mean by that?
Selecting an application with a path does not make it “match by path”, that has to be done with the options at the end of the menu. The paths are shown in the menu to disambiguate them and generally wont be shown in the action except immediately after selecting an entry from the menu (and probably should not even then which is probably why you are seeing slightly odd display there).
Not really, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with anything. The displayed path disambiguates the multiple entries in the menu but does not affect Keyboard Maestro’s behaviour in any way, it just lets you know which one you are selecting. Keyboard Maestro will still be basing it's decisions on the default behaviour (which is by bundle ID primarily) unless you have changed the selection criteria by selecting from the bottom of the menu.
You are way off in the wilderness of untested behaviour at this point. That will likely break the code signing, which in turn will break a lot of how the system views the application.
If you want to run an application multiple times on macOS I would recommend you install a VM of some sort (VMWare, Parallels, or whatever), and run multiple virtual machines and your application inside each of them.
Thanks @peternlewis for all the help and tips.
I did select the path but for some reason Keyboard Maestro kept losing the path.
I only changed the versions to see if that would help things stick. I really don't get why Keyboard Maestro loses track of the file path location but oh well.
Fun strange behavior a bit similar the what I have with the latest version of Safari that seems to be macOS and iOS compatible.
Again thanks everyone for helping me to try to get to the bottom of this.
If you select “Match by Path” at the bottom of the application selection menu, and if you then select a specific Application with a specific Path, then Keyboard Maestro should not “loses track” unless you have Macro Syncing on and are syncing between it and another Mac that does not have the application at the same path.
Thanks, @peternlewis. This must be the reason, then, because I do have that turned on, and my other computer does not have these applications in the Applications folder. I thought it retained the path and would not have worked on the other computer. So I will have to put these applications in the other syncing computers.
By default, Keyboard Maestro looks for the application at the specified path, and then failing that it searches for the application by bundle ID. If it finds it, then the path will be updated.
So if you have an application that is in different locations on different Macs that are syncing back and forth, then essentially they will fight about the location.