The good ol’ OS X Dictionary defines maestro as, “a great performer, especially a musician.” While Keyboard Maestro isn’t a musician, it’s definitely a great performer when it comes to saving time and effort. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to name another app that saves me as much time or as many keystrokes every day as Keyboard Maestro.
The Swiss Army Knife-on-steroids thing is overdone, so I’m gonna call Keyboard Maestro the Leatherman Multi-tool on crack of Mac utilities. Simply put, Keyboard Maestro makes macros. But to call it a mere macro-maker does it a supreme disservice. Yes, it’s a macro-maker, but it’s much more than that.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause at this point and explain what I mean by, “macro.” As far as I’m concerned, a macro is any sequence of actions on your Mac that can be saved, and then invoked and played back with a single keystroke or other trigger.
Actions you can string together in your macros include launching an app; moving or clicking the mouse; typing text; choosing a menu item; opening a file or folder; and hundreds more. And creating macros is easy with its easy-to-use macro editor and huge library of actions.
The figure above shows a macro that clicks the Don’t Save button in dialog boxes when I type Control + Shift + D. I use this macro all the time, and every time I do it saves me from having to grab the mouse.
Or, if you don’t want to drag-and-drop to construct your macro, use Keyboard Maestro’s “Record” feature to record what you do, then save it for playback.
Warning: If you choose to record rather than drag-and-drop, you’ll probably have to tinker with the recording to make it work exactly as you expect.
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