64: Quickeys and Automation Fun with Merlin Mann

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@RosemaryOrchard mentioned about automating Audio Hijack with Keyboard Maestro which lacks proper automation support (about the 3-minute mark).

My greatest disappointment with Rogue Amoeba apps is that they donā€™t support AppleScript. Audio Hijack Pro version 2 had AppleScript support to start or stop a specific session, and Audio Hijack 3 lost it and it never came back. Even 3 actions (start session/stop session/is session running) would make the app so much more automation friendly. But they know their business a lot better than I do, and clearly this isnā€™t something a lot of people are asking for, unfortunately.

However, I figured that I would at least share what I do to automate Audio Hijack, and maybe it would be helpful for Rosemary and some others. I find that Keyboard Maestroā€™s ā€œMatch Imageā€ never seems to work for me, so I try to avoid it whenever possible.

For starting an Audio Hijack session via Keyboard Maestro, here what I do is this:

  1. Launch the app

  2. Wait for app to be active/front

  3. Select menu item in Audio Hijack: ā€œWindowā€ Ā» ā€œSessions Tabā€

  4. Wait for window with title ā€œAudio Hijackā€ to be frontmost

  5. Press āŒ˜1 which is the keyboard shortcut for ā€œSessions Tabā€ (this is probably superfluous, given step #3, but it doesnā€™t hurt, to make doubly sure we are on the right ā€˜tabā€™ of the window)

  6. Down Arrow will select the first Session

  7. Right Arrow will select the next Session. And so on. [See noteĀ¹ below]

  8. Once I moved the proper number of Sessions, I use āŒ˜O to ā€œOpenā€ the Session

  9. Wait for a window with ā€œThe Session Nameā€ to be frontmost

  10. If menu item Control Ā» Start Session exists, select it (I use this rather than āŒ˜R because āŒ˜R will also stop an active Session and I do not want that, in case I trigger this while already hijacking the same session.)

NoteĀ¹: In order to make sure that my Sessions are always in the order that I want/expect, I start them with a number if I use them with automation.

For example, the Session that I use most often is to record Relay.fm live streams, so my first Session is name ā€œ1 Relay.fmā€ so I only have to use the down arrow from the Sessions tab.

My second-most-frequent Session is for ATP so it is named ā€œ2 ATPā€ so I know that I can get to that one with down arrow and one right arrow.

The last Session that I automate is called ā€œ3 Daily Lectionaryā€ so that is one down arrow and right arrow twice.

Any non-number session names come after the numbered sessions, so the others that I have, but donā€™t use for automation, are not numbered.

I hope this is helpful to someone.

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Another fun episode, and always good to hear Merlin.

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Very timely for me: I was looking to automate more of Audio Hijack for my podcast recording sessions. Start and Stop (and Rename output file) were my key requirements.

(Iā€™m trailing long mic and headphone cables to get as far away from fan noise as possible - so remote start and stop would be useful.)

Now to listen to the actual episode. :slight_smile:

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I feel like Automation Fun was a poor name for this episode. Automation end of year complaining was more of the theme.

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Complaining can be fun! :wink:

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Great. The only Rogue Amoeba app supporting AppleScript is Airfoil Iā€™d guess.