Menu Selection using KM

Questions & Suggestions
1

First time using KM. I have a MacBook Air running Ventura 13.1. I want to create a macro that selects an item from a menu, but I don't see menu actions listed under "Categories" when the actions are shown. Where is it hidden?

2

Menu Actions are included in the Interface Control category. Or select the All Actions category and search for “menu”.

3

Hey @QKRefugee,

Welcome to the forum! :smiley:

You finally had to give up QuicKeys huh? I gave up on it completely about 10 years ago after running KM in tandem for about 8 years.

A few tips.

Searching the forum for "select menu" will give you much food for contemplation.

  • Direct search using the Magnifying Glass icon in the upper right of the KM forum page.

Spend at least a little time familiarizing yourself with the Keyboard Maestro Editor – you'd be surprised at how many users completely miss that features they want already exist.

  • Look through all the menus – you won't remember everything, but your mind will establish a framework of what to look for and where.
  • Peek through the Keyboard Maestro Editor's preferences.
  • The Keyboard Maestro actions panel in the editor (Cmd-K), and its search field.
  • The “Insert …” menu items in the Keyboard Maestro Editor's Edit menu – especially the keyboard shortcuts for same.
    • These are very useful for inserting Actions, Text-Tokens, Functions(), Variables, and Date-Strings – and for searching for same.
  • Help is available for a startling number of things.
    • Press the Option key while looking through the menus – you'll find quick access to Help for given items.
    • Note that the Editor's Insert dialogs have a help a help link for the wiki page associated with that item.
    • Actions have a gear menu with options, and you can also right-click on the action to display the same contextual menu, and these contextual menus contain a help item.

More than you wanted to know yet? :sunglasses:

I'll quit there.

-Chris

4

Thanks for the prompt response! I will look this info over when I have a few minutes.

I gave up QK because they didn’t port to 64-bit, and my old Mac was having issues running new software. Of course, my new Mac has issues running old software (Illustrator and Photoshop), but I think I can sort that out.

QKRefugee

5

The developer died, and Startly could never find someone to replace him...

6

Right. They sent around a message to all QK users. Apparently, the guy promised Startly an upgrade, knowing he was unlikely to deliver. He took their money which he needed for treatment, and passed away.

So far, KM is delivering. No chance you folks have a translator from QK? It would save me a bunch of work.

Cheers,QKR

7

Not a chance in <bleep>... :sunglasses:

When I took the plunge I had nearly 2000 QuicKeys macros to convert.

Since I started early I was able to run both utilities concurrently, and I started with the ones I used the most.

You will experience some culture shock with Keyboard Maestro...

Some things that QuicKeys made truly simple for users take a good bit of work to accomplish in Keyboard Maestro, because there's more granularity.

That said – many things you'll want to do have been done, so don't skimp on searching the forum and asking questions.