Popup Menu in Prompt for User Input Problem

Questions & Suggestions
1

I have a Prompt for User Input with a couple of popup menu items (action:Prompt for User Input [Keyboard Maestro Wiki]). For the item which contains a string of numbers (separated by the |), I cannot use the down or up arrow keys to scroll up and down the list. With the mouse I can. For example, pressing the down arrow does not nothing. However if the items are text items (separated by the |) then it is possible to use the down and up arrows to go through the list.

An example: Prompt for User Input example

Is this expected behaviour?

2

Works OK for me:

It would be best if you could post your actual macro.

3

Thanks for the response.

The complete macro is attached and the image is here:

Case macro - first version.png762Ă—950 80.2 KB

cases.kmmacros (6.5 KB)

Further help would be gratefully received.

4

Hey Victor,

We've talked about this on the forum before, but I can't find the specific thread at the moment.

No – this is not the expected behavior, but it's the behavior we're stuck with at this time.

The problem also affects the Keyboard Maestro Status Menu, when it is opened via the keyboard.

Peter has not been able to fix it so far.

-Chris

5

Chris,

Thank you for the explanation. I also noticed the problem with the Status Menu when opened via the keyboard.

It is no more than the most minor of irritants…

6

Sharing what I have just discovered on my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite):

Prompt for User Input popup menu and KM Status Menu scroll nicely (are enabled) for ↑ / ↓ if Ctrl is pressed one time (when the menu is open) :wink:

Hope this help,
–Alain

2 Likes
7

Alain, thanks for sharing this.

It prompted me to do some testing. I could not get the CTRL key approach to work consistently.

But I did discover this:

###When the focus is on the popup menu, use the UP ARROW â–˛ key to OPEN the popup, then you can use the â–˛ or â–Ľ keys to select the item.

Pressing the â–˛ key shows the popup menu:

EDIT: 2016-04-24 17:15 CT
That worked very consistently about 95% of the time for me on Yosemite 10.10.5.
There is still some strange behavior/conditions that sometimes prohibit the arrow keys from working. I ran many tests, but can not figure it out.

Everyone should keep in mind that you also need to enable "TAB to Controls" in the System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts:

Please let me know if this works for you.

8

Hi JMichael,

the arrow up solution works for me (macOS High Sierra). It would be more coherent with my typing behaviour though if arrow down would work as well. Maybe @peternlewis could look into this for a future release.

Chris

9

Running Keyboard Maestro 8.2.4 on macOS 10.12.6.

I am now finding this process works for me:

  1. Tab to popup field
  2. Press either the UP or DOWN arrow key
  3. Press ESC
  4. Press either the UP or DOWN arrow key as needed to select the item of interest.
  5. Press RETURN
10

The behaviour of this is all handled by the system. For some reason it has never behaved well in Keyboard Maestro Engine’s windows, but it is not something I can fix unfortunately (well, maybe if I knew what it is that makes the system behave poorly then I could find some way to not tickle whatever system bug is causing the poor behaviour, but since I have not the slightest idea what it is about Keyboard Maestro Engine that induces the poor behaviour by the system, I can't see there being any solution).

11

So grateful I found this thread. This issue has been bugging me for ages.

Shame it can't be fixed.

But I found this from @JMichaelTX worked for me:

Running Keyboard Maestro 8.2.4 on macOS 10.12.6.

I am now finding this process works for me:

  1. Tab to popup field
  2. Press either the UP or DOWN arrow key
  3. Press ESC
  4. Press either the UP or DOWN arrow key as needed to select the item of interest.
  5. Press RETURN
12

It looks like this issue has been resolved in the latest version of Keyboard Maestro :slight_smile:

13

:notes::angel:t2:♫:angel:t6:🎝:angel:t4::notes:

Choirs of angels herald your 2016 wisdom, @JMichaelTX! Hadn't even occurred to me to check this System setting until I stumbled upon this "offhand" comment! Problem solved! :blush: