Keyboard Cleaner Maestro
The problem
I have this ritual to clean my computer before I leave for the office every Monday morning. I’ve been using Keyboard Cleaner to block keyboard and mouse access until the machine is cleaned.1
Until recently this app has been Keyboard Cleaner. A free app that does exactly that.
Since Mountain Lion though, apps without developer certificate can’t be run anymore (easily).2 So I’ve been living without it for quite some time now, but I wanted it back. It seemed intriguing to me to check out whether Keyboard Maestro would be able to replace an entire “app”.
The solution
I’m calling it Keyboard Cleaner Maestro.
!!! TO STOP THE MACRO PRESS THE ⇧ ⌃ AND ⌘ KEY !!!
Download: https://www.box.com/s/901b9d6dd973a7b45147
Keyboard Cleaner Maestro opens TextEdit3 with a new document, clicks the green traffic light button to maximize the window before it goes into a loop where it constantly does just two things:
- Keep TextEdit the frontmost app
- Move the mouse to the middle of the frontmost window, this way catching inadvertent mouse movement.
It works quite well actually. And it keeps one app off my hard disk. Thanks, Keyboard Maestro!
-
You could also just turn off the screen, which even has a shortcut (⇧⌃⏏) or can be activated with a Hot Corner, but this would mean that the user would have to set “Require password: immediately” in the Security settings, which I have. Oddly enough I prefer running an app instead. ↩
-
That said, Keyboard Cleaner has been submitted for App Store review early July 2011, but apparently didn’t make it into the Store. I assume the app didn’t provide enough “value”. (Though there is an app that does the same thing, only “shinier” with a bit more bling.) ↩
-
Don’t you wish that TextEdit would be quicker again too? ↩