04/30/12 20:32:24

Keyboard Maestro's "Activate Clipboard History Switcher" macro – with a twist

Short story:

This macro allows you to hold the ⇧ key to select the search field (after a 1 sec. delay). You can just activate the History Switcher as before. If you release the buttons (quickly), you can scroll through the list using ↑ and ↓.
If you hold ⇧ a little bit longer though, the search field gets selected and you can start typing.

Long story:

Kaushik Gopal had a really nifty idea for Keyboard Maestro. He is(/has been) using a delay action in a macro to determine whether a certain subaction is executed or not. I really liked that idea and just put it into use.

In Keyboard Maestro there’s a default group named “Clipboard”. It contains several macros to work with the built-in Clipboard History Switchers.
The one I use most is the simple “Activate Clipboard History Switcher” macro, which simply toggles the history windows on and off.

When it activates the history of clipboard entries is selected by default, but not the search field, which I use often.
I always found it annoying to reach for the mouse just to reach that search field. I’m using this feature when I publish a new screencast for Mac OS X Screencasts. I put the link of the video thumbnail jpg on the clipboard, but it is frustrating to keep track which entry was which when I had, say, the screencast location or the blog entry on the clipboard. Long entries get truncated, which doesn’t help either. Thus the search comes in handy.

EDIT: You can actually just hold the key combination used to activate the switcher. No need to “quickly” release all keys except the ⇧ key. (which makes this much easier to use)

Screenshot:

Download:

https://www.box.com/s/9ea39fb8ce38a3e2abf8