6/18/2023 0 Comments Keyboard maestro for mac![]() Keyboard Maestro gives you the ability to group macros in to folders. Having all my scripts in one place has another side benefit, which is the kismet of “Oh wait, that script I wrote for work would also work really nicely on this project too!” When all of your scripts are in one place, it’s way more likely to have those little epiphanies. Scripts are embedded in to macros, macros can be scheduled, and it all syncs via your preferred file syncing solution. Keyboard Maestro has become a single place for all macOS automation scripts to live. Unix systems, such as macOS can use cron jobs, but they don’t sync or migrate to the next computer or are simply forgotten. Even if I was diligent about keeping everything in a single directory, over time and when switching hardware, some scripts are lost, some are kept, and some are kept but the context is lost. I’ve been writing little automation scripts for decades now and they have ended up any number of places over the years, like in Documents, or ~/bin, or in Automator, or a local git repo somewhere. Here are a few reasons, and after that I’ll run through a few of my favorite automations. Yes, on it’s face it’s a drag and drop way to create automations, making it the Mac automation Swiss Army knife, but even if you can code, it is extremely valuable. Why am I writing this? It turns out that I fell in love with Keyboard Maestro. So what changed? Nothing! I can still code and I still don’t want a bunch of little specialized apps running all the time…but I have seen the light on one automation app in particular. Why? Because I can code, dammit! I don’t need a menu bar filled with little icons that are the windows to little ram-munching services when I can just write a bash script or even my own Mac app to do what I need! There are countless apps and tools and plugins and widgets for this on the Mac and over my 20 years using the Mac I have ignored all of them. (thanks, : A better version of the macro is now available here.You may have heard that I’ve been getting more in to automation recently, specifically automating more of my work and personal macOS environments. Update : Here’s an updated version of the “Combine iPhone screenshots” macro for the new iPhone 5 resolution. Check out the app’s tour, full documentation, then buy it from Stairways Software for $36. Keyboard Maestro has a lot to offer, but that’s up to you. I don’t need to manually switch between apps anymore as everything’s automated, and takes 2 seconds, literally. Enter Keyboard Maestro 5.3: I rename the images I need to use “1” and “2”, respectively (“1” goes on the left side) I tell Keyboard Maestro to run an Automator workflow to scale them Keyboard Maestro creates a blank image in its clipboard, composites files 1 and 2 onto the image at a specific pixel position, and creates a new. I came to the point where the process took less than a minute, but still it required a manual and boring effort on my side. Until today, I had to manually drag the image out of Photo Stream (or use Scotty), resize them with Preview, create a new image in Acorn, drop the images in there, adjust their position, and save. For iPhone apps, I like to take two screenshots, place them side by side, and generate a single image. png and renamed with (previously copied to clipboard) front window’s file name. Firstly, the image above: taken with Keyboard Maestro, set it to a specific clipboard, modified with the addition of a pre-defined watermark, saved as. Let alone the other improvements of version 5.3 (here’s the full changelog), let me quickly focus on the image capabilities of the app, as I have set up two new macros that are going to substantially enhance my screenshot-taking duties for the site. You can also capture the screen or a window to an image, or highlight a location on the screen. Version 5.3 adds a bunch of new Image manipulation actions, allowing you to create new images, flip, rotate, resize, and crop images, composite images, styled text and shapes onto images, display images, get the size of images, and even find the image on the screen. With today’s 5.3 update, Keyboard Maestro gets even more powerful, and adds support for one specific area that is going to dramatically speed-up my workflow once again: image manipulation. Keyboard Maestro offers an infinite amount of possibilities, because it is capable of automating almost every aspect of OS X. I have covered Keyboard Maestro in the past on MacStories, and after using the app for over a year now, it still feels like I’m just getting started with it. It is one of my most used OS X utilities – I use it every day, I rely on it to automate processes and tasks that would take repetitive and tedious clicks and selections otherwise, and my work is ultimately faster and more efficient because of it.
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