Keyboard Maestro has many triggers; these are responsible for executing macros. One such trigger is “The System Clipboard Changes“. I don’t use it often, despite how incredibly useful it is. It does exactly what it says: if a macro uses this trigger, Keyboard Maestro will execute the macro any time the clipboard content changes (when you “copy” something).

Here’s a quick example showing the usefulness.

There is a specific issue I have with Microsoft Outlook webmail within Google Chrome. Our email system leverages urldefense.com to alter all external links in the interface (see below). If I’m clicking a link, that’s fine, but if I want to copy a link’s URL it’s annoying to have to clean up the URL to remove the urldefense cruft.

Everything I’ve marked with an “x” is added by urldefense.

The macro is simple. I leverage The System Clipboard Changes trigger to trigger the macro. The macro is inside of a macro group that is only activated for Google Chrome. I use an If Then Else action to determine if the URL is a target for manipulation. Finally, I use a Search and Replace action with some regular expressions to strip off the urldefense cruft.