“Select or show a menu item” not working with a generated menu in Reminders

The “Select or show a menu item” action is working inconsistently with the Reminders app.

This works for setting the sort order of a list:

Menu title: View
Submenu: Sort by
Menu item: Title

But this doesn't work for assigning a reminder to a list:

Menu title: Edit
Submenu: List
Menu item: Home (I have a list titled “Home”)

I suspect this is because this list of lists is dynamically generated. Is there any way around this?

This is a known problem with apps on macOS which don't populate their menus until the user clicks on them. I didn't know Apple's own apps had this problem. Hey, this may be an ugly problem, but KM includes the tools needed to fix it.

So, you can either click on the menu item names yourself, using the mouse (that is, using KM actions which move and click the mouse), which would probably work, or you can use AppleScript which has additional ways to solve the problem.

I would like to provide code to do this, but I can't, because my Reminders app doesn't have an "Edit / List" menu item. Maybe you are using an older version of Reminders? Which version of macOS do you use?

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You can also try this old trick:

Invoke the parent menu
Simulate the Escape key
Select the actual menu item

The first two steps just wake the menu system up.

Sort by Title.kmmacros (21 KB)

Macro screenshot

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You'll need to activate Reminders then drill down -- if you have a list stored on iCloud you have to hit the "List" menu item, then "iCloud", then the list name you want. And you need a small pause between each step to let the next menu populate: