76: Automating with Alfred

[ldebritto]

I fell your pain. If you happen to have Keyboard Maestro on your tool belt, take a look here:

@ldebritto

I’m a huge fan of using URLs to mail messages for future reference on projects. That said, I don’t like the fact that whenever I click back on the mail app, it will also bring to the front the perilous Inbox with its never ending temptations to switch tasks.

So I’ve made a Keyboard Maestro Macro that will work alongside the Focus app:

1. Whenever I’m on a Focus session, I have its script capabilities run a Macro that will write “on” to a Keyboard Maestro variable named focus, conversely it will change it to “off”. should its previous state be “on”;
2. Then the magic will happen with the Macro bellow: whenever I activate Mail. it will look for the title of the front Window and if it contain the word Inbox (ot Inboxes for also matching the unified inbox), it will close that window only.

The trick for this macro to work is find a reliable way to set the “Focus” variable to on or off depending on your work routines. Mine is tied to Focus App: whenever a Focus session is starts/stops it will trigger a Keyboard Maestro Macro that will set this variable to on/off.

If your hours are more fixed, you could create a Macro that will turn the “Focus” variable on/off depending on certain hours. Or even use those Mail Hours instead of the “Focus” variable altoghether. Like this:

In that case, Mail will close its inbox window between 15:00 and 16:00. You can set your own schedule accordingly.