One of my most-used workflows is to invoke my "Work" palette (CTRL-W) and then fire off one of that palette's macros by a hotkey. I often have Slack at the front when I do this. I've just recently been encountering a new behaviour though. I can open the palette as usual, but when I push my hotkey (a single letter), that letter gets intercepted by Slack instead of launching the macro. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
Running:
Try relaunching the Keyboard Maestro Engine and/or Slack.
I have occasionally seen cases where the Keyboard Maestro Engine doesn't seem to come to the front like it should and relaunching it resolves it.
I've relaunched both, but the behaviour persists.
How are you doing the hot key in the palette?
OK, so looking at your macro group and macro, and assuming the palette is open and you press 'm' and it does not trigger the macro, that seems quite odd given that it is a hot key and unless Slack is also registering hot keys or is doing something very funky with the event queue that should trigger.
Try this: Create a new macro in the Global Macro Group, give is the hot key 'm' and have it do something visible (perhaps the Alert action). Verify that works, and then switch to Slack and see if the macro triggers there or if Slack somehow sees the 'm' and stops the trigger working.
Create a new macro in the Global Macro Group, give is the hot key 'm' and have it do something visible
Done. Just as with my palette macro, the 'm' hotkey works everywhere except in Slack, Out of curiosity, are you able to reproduce this on your end?
Slack is an Electron app, so doesn't necessarily play by the usual Events hierarchy rules. A bare M can create a reminder in Slack, and the keystroke may be being snaffled before it reaches KM.
Try with a different keystroke -- using ⌘/ to bring up the shortcuts list, N is an obvious one to test with. I'm afraid I can't test the solution myself -- what you want to do works fine for me!
Hmm. Slack must have made some sort of change on their end recently, as I've been using this exact setup for a little over two years without issue. Way too late for me to change my muscle memory with a different keystroke haha. Absent a solution, I'll just add a step that switches to an app other than Slack when I invoke the palette.
This is just a test to see if we're on the right track. If everything works when using N then yes, you'll probably have to add an app switch. If N doesn't work either it might be worth digging deeper if someone can replicate the issue.
I have a bunch of macros that launch from this palette, each using a different letter. One of them is 'N' - same issue. Ditto for R, A, F and P!
I don't know, I don't use Slack.
Is Slack full screen? Full screen sometimes blocks hot keys.
No, not running it full-screen.
I don't know then.
Unless Slack is doing something to the event queue to snag events as they are created, I'm not sure what could be done.
The Hot Key API is designed so that even if multiple apps register the same hot key, the key is swallowed and every app is notified of the key press.
