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Scripting

Controlling Keyboard Maestro via Scripting

The primary scripting interface to Keyboard Maestro is the Keyboard Maestro Engine’s do script support. You can ask Keyboard Maestro to:

Note in most cases you must ask “Keyboard Maestro Engine”, not “Keyboard Maestro”.

The easiest way is to use the name, for example:

tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine"
  do script "Switch to Last Application"
end tell

The macro must be defined and currently active.

If there is more than one macro with the same name, you will get an error, so you can use a UID instead of a name.

tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine"
  do script "D0C150C7-8A0C-4837-918A-427E2BCFB6B9"
end tell

The do script will not return until the macro is finished executing.

The easiest way to determine a macro’s UID is to edit the macro and select from the “Or by script” trigger to display some script code which includes the UID.

An even more powerful way to script Keyboard Maestro is to execute specific actions based on their XML code. This allows you to construct any action, including changing the action on the fly, without having to create a macro first. A simple example would be:

tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine"
  do script "<dict><key>MacroActionType</key><string>SwitchToLastApplication</string></dict>"
end tell

The easiest way to determine the appropriate XML is to create an example action in an example macro and then export the macro.

You can disable or enable a Macro or Macro Group from AppleScript with:

tell application "Keyboard Maestro"
  setMacroEnable "Macro/Macro Group Group Name or UID" with/without enable
end tell

This actually asks the editor to disable or enable the macro or macro group, so the change is both visible and permanent.

You can start editing a Macro or Macro Group from AppleScript with:

tell application "Keyboard Maestro"
  editMacro "Macro/Macro Group Name or UID"
end tell

Executing Scripts

You can execute shells scripts, AppleScripts, Automator Workflows, or filter the clipboard using BBEdit Text Factories.

AppleScripts and shell scripts give you a powerful way of adding new facilities we have not specifically provided for, as well as controlling other applications.

The results of AppleScripts and shell scripts can be displayed, or they can be typed or pasted in to the current selection. This allows you to insert text that depends on many factors, such as date calculations, file listings, SQL queries, web pages, or anything else you can imagine.

You can also use the clipboard to pass data between actions. For example, a script can use pbpaste to read the current clipboard, and pbcopy to set the current clipboard. You can use the Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard action to restore the clipboard afterwards.

Shell scripts are executed in the background and will be abandonded after 20 seconds, allowed to continue running to completion but otherwise ignored.

AppleScripts are executed in the background via osascript. This means they are not allowed to do user interaction. You can work around this by asking an application like System Events to do the user interaction for you, for example:

tell application "System Events"
  activate
  display dialog "Hello"
end tell

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