• Development,  Tech Tips

    Keyboard Maestro URL Handler – Link Injection

    Introduction

    This post outlines some advanced usage of the Keyboard Maestro URL handler (KMLink).

    A few weeks ago I was automating some Chrome form filling with Keyboard Maestro. It occurred to me that the perfect trigger for what I was doing would actually be a simple link within the Chrome webpage itself (or a simple bookmarklet); when the link/bookmarklet is clicked, the KM macro is executed. How about a little backstory before I get to the “here’s how to do it!” ?

    We use a project management system called ActiveCollab. It’s a great piece of web-based software, but often simple things take several steps. When I want to quickly mark a task as “Due in 2 business days” (which I need to do very often) it’d be whole lot nicer to click a link to set this, than to have to go to the edit screen, pull up the date picker, think about what two business days from today is, click that date and submit the form. Sure, I could write a module for Active Collab that would do what I want, but Keyboard Maestro provides me with much more freedom and I can build it in minutes instead of hours.

  • Tech Tips

    Customizable Date variables in Keyboard Maestro

    UPDATE: Though the solution below works well, I do recommend following the first commenter’s advice and using the ICUDateTime text tokens instead, which allow you to use any ICU date format, without having to invoke a shell script.

    Sometimes you need a date and/or time variable in your Keyboard Maestro macros. The easiest One way I’ve found to do this is via an “Execute Shell Script” action. You’ll just use the date command and format as desired.

    Keyboard Maestro "Date" Variable