Yes, the way Discourse does conversations is terrible!
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I use Keyboard Maestro probably only once every two weeks. But I have projects that occasionally give rise to repetitive tasks that involve multiple steps. Repetitive in the sense of 50 to thousands of times. And often these require the use of multiple programs.
These tasks are often trivial in nature. A monkey could do them. Each run through might involve 12 steps going in and out of three programs. Cutting and pasting and transforming data. But doing them 1000 times is brutal. It is like saying “toy boat” quickly 20 times in a row. You start making mistakes. Humans are not good at this sort of thing. And it takes forever to complete the task. It approaches becoming “impossible”.
Keyboard Maestro solves this category of problem. And I really have no other solution. So this application is essential to me.
So figure out if you ever run into tedious problems of this sort. If you have done them, but only with frustration, think of Keyboard Maestro. If you have dismissed them as “undoable” think again.
The best scenario is that the nature of your work is such that you do some repetitive task multiple times a day. Perhaps only 3 steps and you “live” with it. Keyboard Maestro is great for this.
But I end up with “different” repetitive tasks that come up and they really are too long to do more than twenty times in a row without getting irritating. I write a custom Keyboard Maestro script. It is a lot easier to write some “quickie” Keyboard Maestro script then hauling out AppleScript (for me anyway). For me it does not have to be “elegant”. Commonly it does not have to be super fast. It just gets a job done accurately. And “slow” is always faster than a human if that is your benchmark.
I final note about this program. The on-line forum for Keyboard Maestro is fantastic. If you can describe clearly the task you are trying to accomplish, but have some problem here or there with your script or think that some “step” is impossible, you can post to this forum and very helpful, clever people who seem to live in Keyboard Maestro will answer within hours. Just have the sense to describe exactly what you are attempting to do and what programs you are using to do it.
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I recently purchased KM, one of the first Macros I created was one to:
- Wake Mac at 6 AM Mon to Fri.
- Turn on Caffeine to keep it awake for 2.5 hours
- Launch 3 URLs in Chrome
- Launch Evernote
In the morning I leave for work at 7:30 am therefore Caffeine can turn off automatically once I’m gone.
Right now I’m using Keyboard Maestro with Elgato Streamdeck to make many functions push button driven. I’ve learnt to rely heavily on app-specific profiles in the Streamdeck, which aligns nicely with Keyboard Maestro’s similar function.
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