Palette problems

I am having trouble understanding how to use KM Palettes. Here's what I want to do:

-- Create a group of macros that can only be triggered from a palette
-- Assign a trigger that brings up a palette listing those macros, along with keys that trigger the macros from the palette.
-- The palette disappears when one of the macros is activated.

I have tried using "shows a palette for one action when" triggers in the group settings, but:
(a) I have an unrelated macro that runs in the background every five seconds, and the palette disappears whenever that background macro runs.
(b) I can't figure out how to display a shortcut in the palette without assigning a shortcut to the macros that works even when the palette isn't visible.

I'm no expert, but if you assign the same keyboard trigger to all the macros you want to share a palette they will all appear in the same palette and the first unique character in the macro name will be used as its trigger.

Hey Gabriel,

The set-up:

The Pallette:

To surmount the problem with your macro running in the background you'll have to get creative.

You'll have to turn OFF the background macro while the one-time palette is visible, and have your macros turn it back on when run.

Or you'll have to use a full-time palette and deactivate it in each macro.

image

Either way should be doable, but if your background macro is mission-critical then the second method will be the way to go.

Ray is talking about the Conflict Palette here.

-Chris

Thanks, that's very helpful.

I think what's going on in your example is that you've got single-key triggers assigned to various macros in Mail, right? That wouldn't work for me because I'm hoping to use this for some macros that are available in any application—so obviously I can't let them take over the G key or whatever. So I think I should try the Conflict Palette approach.

Why not when it's a single-use palette you only bring up when you want to select a macro?

The keyboard shortcut is only active when the palette is visible.

And – you don't have to use 1-key hotkeys – this was just convenient for my use-case.

-Chris

Oh! I didn't get that. Thanks, this is much closer to what I'm trying to do.

1 Like

Another example would be to call the palette with a letter combination (here xc) and then trigger the macro with the initial letters of the action...