Screen shots workflow advice needed

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hello All,

I have a task that I perform several times a day and trying to automate using Keyboard Maestro if possible.

Here is a high-level definition of what I want to accomplish:

  1. Begin a session to take screenshots (meaning the first screen shot taken to last screen shot per project/session)
  2. Take a screenshot and either save or copy to clipboard
  3. Take additional screen shots, copy to clipboard or save to a folder. (In a given session, I take several screen shots.)
  4. When the session is over, (ie x number of screen shots taken and saved to a folder, automatically named by date and time if possible).
  5. Move the folder and all recordings to another folder, ideally asking each time, if not possible to a predetermined folder.

Hope this makes sense. Currently, I do this manually. I use CleanShot to take the screenshots and copy them to the clipboard. One by one, save them to a folder by dragging and dropping, then open that temp folder in Finder and rename. Then move it to its final destination.

Thank you in advance...

2

How about this as a starting point? It doesn't cover moving the files at the end of the session, as I'm not sure what your requirements are for that part of it.

  • Trigger the macro and take a screenshot.
  • A folder called "Screenshots <Today's Date>" is created on the desktop and your screenshot is saved there, timestamped.
  • Subsequent triggering of the macro on the same day will save more screenshots to the same folder.

Screenshots to Desktop Folder.kmmacros (47 KB)

Macro screenshot

Keyboard Maestro Export
Keyboard Maestro Export878×2184 188 KB

Example Output

image
image816×310 36.9 KB

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3

Oh wow yes you need a new screenshot workflow and KM can give you a lot of control.

It sounds like everything you want to do is possible, but we definitely need more details to really get it as close to perfect as possible for you.

Some follow-up questions:

  1. How is a session defined? Would it be enough to have a hotkey that signifies the start and end of a session? I'm not sure of how else to do it but would be interested in any other ideas you have in mind for this.

  2. What kind of mechanism do you want to use to decide if a screenshot goes to a folder or is copied to the clipboard? Are you ok with a user prompt after each time you take a screenshot? Or are you looking for a more automatic way?
    .
    FYI you have the option to do both at the same time if that works for you. KM will let you save a screenshot to the clipboard AND write to a file in the same macro.
    .
    If you don't want to have the screenshot you're using on your clipboard to be written to a file at the same time, that's ok too - it will just help with creating the macro if we find out now.
    .
    I'm imagining a case where you want to keep it on the clipboard so you can edit it in some way first before saving it in your image editor. But if we already saved it in its original form, then it'll be a duplicate that you'll have to delete manually. We can avoid that too but have to know what your use case is exactly.

  3. Do you want to name your session desktop folder or is a folder named with a timestamp ok?
    .
    The macro could name it at the start or end of your session – your choice. I recommend a macro that asks you what you want to name it at the end – this way you can just start taking screenshots in a session without having to think about it. Then, when the session is over and the macro wants to move it to its final destination, it can ask you what you want to name it (and then move it off your desktop)

1 Like