This week our guest for Chit Chat Across the Pond is Mike Price, also known as @Grumpy in the podfeet slack and our live show chat room. During the live NosillaCast, I have to perform a super repetitive set of tasks to add chapter marks as I’m recording the show. If you enjoy there being chapter marks, you should give partial thanks to Mike, because he figured out how to automate the process for me using Keyboard Maestro from keyboardmaestro.com/…
The thing that fascinated me was that he didn’t know Keyboard Maestro before creating this automation for me. In this conversation, he explains what Keyboard Maestro is, how he learned it, and what you can do with it. I asked him to break down each panel of the software for me methodically and explain the interface because while I’ve done some super simple automations with Keyboard Maestro, the interface continues to confuse me.
David Sparks has one of his famous Field Guides on Keyboard Maestro, which are really mini-video tutorials. Mike watched David’s Field Guide to learn the tool, so I’ve included my affiliate link in case you want to learn from the great MacSparky yourself: learn.macsparky.com/…
Mike is funny, articulate, and a brilliant developer. We used a Google Doc to collaborate on an outline, and Mike added enough detail that I think it could be really valuable for you as a reference guide for our discussion so I’ve included it in the shownotes: CCATP notes with Mike at docs.google.com/…
Mike also promised to provide the Keyboard Maestro macros that he talked about during the show: DoNotifications, Grumpy’s Hindy Chapter Marks, and possibly the most useful, his XKPasswd Macros to connect to Bart’s awesome password creation tool. Here’s a link to a zip file of his macros – remember to be cautious when downloading macros from the Internet so check them carefully before enabling them!
Great discussion, and thanks for helping people get started with Keyboard Maestro.
If you’re looking for help on any aspect within Keyboard Maestro, keep in mind that for most things (like triggers, or tokens), if you hold the Option key down before clicking the (+) the menu will switch to giving help on the item and take you directly to the help on that trigger, this also works in all the Insert menus in the Edit menu. Also, in each action in the gear menu you can select Help to get Help on the specific action.