I decided on a keyboard maestro macro layout where multiple macros are triggered by the same hotkey, opening up a "menu", that looks like this:
I usually trigger them by typing the corresponding number, but in some instances I found, that potentially "cycling" through the menu by pressing the down (or up) arrow would be faster.
Is there any way to achieve that in KBM? Couldn't find anything about this.
Thanks!
Here's one way (which I posted to a different topic earlier).
@thoffman666 Interesting! That's a great idea. Will play around with that a bit. Only comment would be, that it would require "re-wrapping" all macros into this selection macro.
Ideally I'd be able to use the Macro Palette directly and just navigate within that palette with keys.
I'm not sure what you mean by "re-wrapping". All of the individual macros remain independent and can still be invoked by their own triggers. My macro simply provides an alternative way to trigger them. Also, since the list is just a text file, the list can be easily edited (i.e., macros can be easily added or removed) without even launching the Keyboard Maestro editor.
Right. What I mean with "re-wrapping" is that with your method it's required to manually add all macro names a) to the list b) link each macro to the "if routine", so we're adding two points of manually required work. Perhaps there is a way to dynamically create a text file with the macros in question (should be easy), the trickier part might be to automatically create the items in the if routine.
Or perhaps that's a feature request (to be able to program a fully dynamic menu style selection in KM) !
Yes, that's true for the one I posted, so I misspoke. That was for illustrative purposes. The macro I actually use does not use conditionals. The list I use includes UUID's, and the macro simply executes based on that. When that is done instead, the list can be edited outside of KM editor. I'm sorry for the confusion.
Palettes do not have any concept of selection, so you cannot arrow up/down or otherwise select macros that way.
In Conflict Palettes like the one you have shown, you can press the highlighted letter (eg the numbers in your image) to narrow down the palette until only one item remains which then is executed.
In cases where the number keys are not used, you can also select the entry by number.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for clarifying, yes that's how I'm navigating at the moment (narrowing down via numbers).
Is this something that potentially could be considering for a future update?
Imagine how useful a more complex menu structure of KM macros could be!
Not really - palettes having focus would mean that the document you are operating on would lose focus which causes all sorts of havoc.
Some sort of other tree structured hot key system might be possible, but not anything with keyboard focus.
Yeah that makes.
I see that the "Prompt for User Input" is "stealing" focus from the current document and bypasses it to the popup input window. Perhaps using that functionality as a basis for navigating through a menu / list of macros could be useful?
Navigating via hotkeys (for instance Cmd+Option+arrows) could work too, although a bit less convenient