As a start, I spent the last two days porting all my Automator, Moom and Shortcuts automations to Keyboard Maestro. I was able to get everything to work including i) automating tasks that could not be easily done in automator / spotlight and ii) control of the Spotlight window over multiple displays!
As Keyboard Maestro is far superior that the above tools and everything is now in one place, I am kicking myself for giving up 5 years ago. It is great to be back and a huge thank you to those who have assisted me in porting everything (i.e., those who have posted information on-line, and this who have responded to my forum question).
I have one follow up with respect to the Move and Resize action for windows. It is very slow to run, at least relative to Moom which has no latency, as I can see the window jumping / resizing. That said:
Is this expected / normal?
Is there a way to avoid this / speed up the resizing?
Is there a reason for this jumping while resizing?
Appreciate the help and once again, thrilled to be back and looking forward to building further automations!
@Nige_S Appreciate all the great information and the link.
I happy to try the terminal command you gave but before I do, can you please share the terminal command to put things back to normal (i.e. the way they currently are).
Generally (not always true for all apps) default settings are part of the app's code and then overridden by user preferences -- and it's user prefs we're setting with the defaults command.
So to return to KM's default we simply delete our override:
...porting all my Automator, Moom and Shortcuts automations to MoomKeyboard Maestro.
Not that you asked for my two cents, but...
As one who has used Keyboard Maestro extensively to move and resize windows, for many of my macros I'm slowly porting that aspect of the automation to calls to Moom.
(I'll exclude macros that I'm likely to share on the forum, since not every user that downloads a macro will have Moom.)
Appreciate you pointing out the typo, it is fixed in my OP
As one who has used Keyboard Maestro extensively to move and resize windows, for many of my macros I'm slowly porting that aspect of the automation to calls to Moom.
(I'll exclude macros that I'm likely to share on the forum, since not every user that downloads a macro will have Moom.)
tell application "Moom"
apply layout "My Moom Layout"
end tell
Excellent point and very Interesting. I had never thought of that though one does have to have Moom running.
What is your rationale for this as i) I can do everything in KM that I can do in Moom and ii) I like the idea of having everything in one place (and that may just be me) unless another application is far superior.
The foundation of my macOS automation is certainly Keyboard Maestro, but some of my macros call other applications when Keyboard Maestro:
can't do a particular automation (e.g., with Shortcuts that does some automation tasks that are not exposed via public API), or
the other app is far superior at a particular task (e.g., Moom with window management).
Now I am very curious, what part of Moom’s window management do you find far superior.
The only – and may not use Moom as fully as you do though I do have chains, layouts, etc. – advantages I see to calling Moom configurations are i) no need to reprogram KM and ii) great ease to revert to Moom (if and when needed).
Moom has to be installed, not necessarily running. The AppleScript will open Moom if it is not already open.
But since there would be a Moom startup delay if it's not open, I always operate with Moom open.
The responsiveness you mentioned in your OP is enough to tip the scale for me. But even without that issue, I find many of the other Moom features to be huge time-savers.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned performance issues, this point is correct if you are referring to automation within macros and your scope is limited to simple window resizing and movement.
I find set-up to be much easier because one can manually arrange windows and have Moom read the positions and sizes and build a Moom Layout.
Also, using Keyboard Maestro and Moom together can be very powerful. For example, refer to: Use Moom Layout Sets
Agree.
Also, not as frequently as with Keyboard Maestro, but I sometimes call Moom Layouts using AlfredWorkflows, BTTtrackpad gestures, and Shortcuts.
In summary, Keyboard Maestro is my main automation pipeline, but I spawn other tools when I find their use to be more efficient. YMMV.
First off, I love Keyboard Maestro and rely on it hundreds of times a day in my job. But second, that job is as part of the two-person company that wrote Moom, so I have to respond to that statement :)...
As much as I do love Keyboard Maestro, it cannot do everything Moom can do (see footnote). It can't hover-move or hover-resize background windows by simply moving the mouse while holding down a modifier key. It can't snap a window to defined drop zones that highlight as you drag the window to each area of the screen. It can't put a set of defined resizing actions on a pop-up palette that activates when you hover over the green button.
The list goes on, but the generalized point is that any app developed to do one type of thing will (almost always) be able to do that one type of thing better than an app that does 5,000 things. And that's not saying the 5,000 thing app is bad—far from it! My job would be much tougher without Keyboard Maestro; I shudder to think about it, actually.
But I don't try to do everything in Keyboard Maestro. I use Keyboard Maestro to work with the other programs I use that focus and do things well, including Moom, Name Mangler, Carbon Copy Cloner, Stream Deck, etc.
Use the tools that work for you, instead of working extra hard to make one tool do things that it may not be optimized to do.
-rob.
[1]Some of these examples are somewhat possible with complicated macros, but you will run into things that are very hard or impossible to do—activate a macro on modifier key down plus mouse movement or draw a highlight rectangle onscreen that moves with the mouse or pop up a palette of options any time the mouse pointer hovers over a green button, etc.
I stand corrected and should have been clearer, there was no intent to insult or minimize the power of Moom, Not the slightest.
I should have been clearer stated for teh things I use Moom fro which is to move and resize windows.
Please accept my heartfelt apologies. I am truly sorry!
Joel
P.S. Agree with the advice of Use the tools that work for you, instead of working extra hard to make one tool do things that it may not be optimized to do. as the idea is to simplify and speed up taks.
