Text Expansion Not Working

Hoping for some guidance here.

  • Using macOS 13.2.1. KM 10.2.

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed my text expansion macros have stopped working.

I have checked that the permissions are still granted in privacy->accessibility. Both KM and KM engine are switched to on.

In the following macro, the "display text" action fires both times, but the insert text action does not insert any text. This is the case for this macro, as well as my many others.

test.kmmacros (2.0 KB)

Works as expected here in BBEdit after enabling the Group.

OK, so the macro is triggering. So you have at least most of Input Monitoring/Accessibility permissions.

Does the Insert Text fail in all applications? Have you tried Restarting? (silly question, but when wacky things happen, it can occasionally help)

@peternlewis Yes, I have rebooted several times since I've noticed this issue. And yes, appears to fail in most applications (Drafts, Word, Safari, Things ...)

  1. Change to Insert Text by Pasting, and see if that helps.

  2. Have you installed any software recently that could be interfering?

It sounds like something is blocking Keyboard Maestro’s ability to type characters.

Normally, the only system restriction for that is Accessibility permissions.

So I would guess, either there are Accessibility problems, or some other software is doing something, either weird or intentionally blocking it.

You could try reinstalling Keyboard Maestro, which might unbork the system permissions, or you could try resetting your accessibility permissions. After that I'm out of ideas.

To reinstall:

  • Quit Keyboard Maestro and Keyboard Maestro Engine
  • Download a fresh copy from: https://download.keyboardmaestro.com/
  • If the file is still a .zip file, unzip it.
  • Use the Finder to move the resulting Keyboard Maestro.app application to the Applications folder (replacing the old version)
  • Launch the Keyboard Maestro app from the Applications folder.

This will not affect your macros.

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Reinstalling KM did not seem to have an effect – the error persists.

I don't think there's any new software I've installed that could be an issue here. I went through my applications folder sorted by date and I don't see anything that would shape things outside of its own application functions.

Is there any way to tell if an accessibility permission is blocking it? Or is resetting all the permissions the only troubleshooting fix here?

Unfortunately not...

You don't have to reset them all – you can reset just the Keyboard Maestro Engine's Accessibility settings by running this command in the Terminal app:

tccutil reset Accessibility com.stairways.keyboardmaestro.engine

Have you run the Keyboard Maestro Editor's Interactive Help from its Help menu? If not I would start there.

I would probably rebuild the launch-services database with Onyx before resetting the KMEN's permissions.

KM should be checking for secure-input problems, but just for giggles I'd run this macro:

Macro: Find the App Responsible for a Secure Input Lockout - #8 by JMichaelTX

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Other than reseting Accessibility permissions, the only other thing would be to try a Safe boot and see if the problem persists then.

Ok, running this command did it.

Very surprising as I had already switched this off manually in the settings GUI. I guess it got stuck?

Thanks!