Play a sound when a long press is detected

To launch various applications with shortcuts, I have set up shortcuts such as

"Option + C" tap: launch Chrome
"Option + C" long press: launch Safari

However, even if I release my finger thinking I've made a long press, there are cases where it isn't recognized as a long press and is still recognized as a tap.

Of course, it's fine if I hold down the key long enough, but since it's a shortcut I'll use hundreds of times, I don't like to keep long pressing it for any longer than necessary.

So I thought it would be good if there was a pop sound when it recognized that a long press had been made, so I'd know when to release my finger.

Is that possible?

I doubt it. It might be a feature that could be added to KM, but I doubt that too. But I see your point.

There is probably a way to change the duration of the long press. KM has some internal variables that might be able to address this. It sounds like you need a shorter duration. Hopefully someone can tell us both if that's a setting that we can change.

Airy, Thank you for your reply. Oh yes, even if I can't make a sound, it would be very useful if I could change the long press time. Thank you.

There is a macOS command that can list dozens of KM's internal variables. Here's the command. Enter this command into a Terminal window. Perhaps one of them looks like the variable for the double click time.

defaults read com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.engine

To be honest, I don't see a variable that describes what you need. But I'm not expert at this. Maybe someone can tell us if there is one.

Click here to see how to change the default timings for hot keys.

That page also lists all those other KM preferences, so you might like to bookmark it.

Thanks tiffle. My method only listed a subset. At least I knew there was an answer.

Nice to know my Multi-Press Macros still have some usefulness.

Here's an example caller that plays a sound as soon as a long-press has been detected, which isn't possible with the native long-press detection:

Short-Long Press with Beep.kmmacros (42 KB)

Macro screenshot

That command will only reveal defaults that have been set; it won't reveal defaults that can be set but are not currently set, i.e. hidden preferences. To find those, you have to use strings command on the binary itself, though I don't even know if that works any more.

I wrote about it ... OMG 16 years ago.

-rob.

Thank you tiffle, I checked the webpage.

Thank you noisneil, this macro seems to help me achieve my goal.