I’ve not used KM very much yet, and I just installed Yosemite on my Mac on a new partition on another drive. I don’t know where my original macros are stored so I can transfer them over to the new system. Couldn’t find it in the online documentation.
Help!
Hey Eric,
Keyboard Maestro has its own documentation viewer, so there's no need to use the online version. See the first item in the Help menu.
(Single-quoted items below indicate the literal string without the quotes.)
Reading on down in the Help menu you'll also find an 'Open Preferences Folder' item.
You can discover that menu item eventually by searching the documentation for 'preference', but a better way is to download the PDF version of the documentation and search with Preview for 'preference folder'.
Preview has a rudimentary smart-search, so it's possible to search for 'preference folder' and find 'preferences folder'. An exact string may be searched for by double-quoting it: "preferences folder"
When you're looking for preferences on a Mac the primarily locations to search are:
~/Library/Application Support/
~/Library/Preferences/
No Mac-user should rely on Spotlight for all their search needs, because it leaves certain things out when it indexes and will not search the system space without special instructions.
You need a search tool like EasyFind (freeware) that physically searches designated locations.
I prefer Find Any File, because it is more versatile and has a filter for found items. It resembles the old Apple utility Find File, and the non-app-store version can find as Root. It is donation-ware.
All of this may be more than you wanted to know, but hopefully it will help others with a similar problem.
-Chris
Thanks for the heads up on these two apps, both look very useful.
Are the individual macros stored, individually anywhere on the drive?
No, they are all stored in the Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist file in the Keyboard Maestro preferences folder.
And…after a couple of years, here’s the exact answer (at least on Sierra):
Users/ACCOUNTNAME/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro/Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist
where “ACCOUNTNAME” is your username on the computer.
macOS hides the Library directory, so in Finder, hold down the Option key while clicking the “Go” menu, and the Library option will appear. Select it to open your Library folder.
There’s an easier way to get there. In the KM Editor, use the menu “Help->Open Preferences Folder”.
I only discovered this a few weeks ago… 
Thank you guys. I restored my latest macros from the Preference.
I know that you can find the Macros in the following location Users/ACCOUNTNAME/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro/Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist, but I'm trying to find them on a different drive that is mounted on the system (my original drive) and I can't access the k=hidden library folder because when I hit option it shows me the Library for the drive that I'm booted into (my backup drive).
I can't boot into the original drive.
How can I find the plist from the origianl drive if I can't get to the hidden Library folder on that drive?
Hey Steve,
Navigate to the correct user's home folder.
Then type ⇧⌘. to show invisibles in the front Finder window.
Continue to navigate to where you need to go.
Otherwise you could use:
The Terminal.app
ForkLift
Path Finder
Find Any File
EasyFind (probably)
Or a number of other available utilities.
-Chris
Thanks Chris, I’ll take a look.
Well, I'm a bit confused. If the folder you are looking for is NOT the current boot drive, then I wouldn't think the old user's Library folder would be hidden. But even if it is, you can get there by using the Finder Goto Folder tool (Go > Go To Folder). You just need to give it the correct path.
Normally, that would be:
~/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro
But on this drive it will be:
/Volumes/<NameofDriveVolume>/ACCOUNTNAME/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro
For example, a folder on my external drive:
/Volumes/LaCie 2Big 3TB/Archive
Questions?