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Keyboard Maestro URL Handler (KMLink) – Introduction and Basic Usage
Keyboard Maestro offers many ways to trigger macros, but unfortunately there isn’t a URL handler that lets you trigger macros via a URL. There are a number of keyboardmaestro:// URLs handled by the built-in url scheme, but executing a macro isn’t an option. If you’re interested in triggering macros via bookmarklets and Finder shortcuts, read on…
I’ve written a URL handler that allows you to execute macros and pass variables to them. It’s a simple app that registers a URL handler to process kmlink:// links.
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Trigger a Keyboard Maestro Macro with a Finder Shortcut / Icon
Using the Keyboard Maestro URL Handler (KMLink), you can create clickable shortcuts that you can use in Finder to trigger KM macros. Why would this be helpful? I have a macro that synchronizes my tracked time between two different applications. I wanted to trigger this with a simple mouse click, but didn’t want to tie it to a hotkey. I wanted it to feel more like “running an application.” So, I created the shortcut and moved it into my ~/Documents directory. Then, I right-clicked and chose “Get Info” and gave it a nice icon. Lastly, I dragged the item into my dock. Now I have a really nice icon that I can click whenever I want to sync my time.
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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.
