Glossary

Collection An ordered list of things (like “Lines” in a Variable or File) that you can iterate through using the For Each action
Clipboard The system clipboard is where you store items when you Copy and Paste. When you Copy an item, it is temporarily stored in the Clipboard and when you Paste, the item is copied from the Clipboard into your currently selection
Clipboard History Normally the system stores only one clipboard. Keyboard Maestro keeps a history of your system clipboard, ensuring you never lose data on the clipboard and allowing you to copy and paste multiple items,
Clipboard Switcher is a feature of Keyboard Maestro that allows you to copy or paste to/from a set of Named Clipboards
Conflict Palette is a palette that lets you disambiguate your selection when a macro trigger triggers multiple macros simultaneously
Excluded Applications is the set of applications that should not appear in the Application Switcher list, allowing you to hide applications you rarely want to switch to. These applications are also ignored when hiding other applications
Global Macro Group a predefined Macro Group that always exists and is the default location for new Macros
GUID see UUID
Hot Key A keystroke that acts as a Macro Trigger to start the execution of Macro Actions in a Macro
KeyCue software from ergonis that displays command keys and can also display Keyboard Maestro Hot Keys (more info)
Keyboard Maestro Engine The process that enables your Macros, Application Switcher, Window Switcher, Named Clipboard Switcher and web server to work even after you quit Keyboard Maestro
Mac OS X see macOS
macOS The Apple Macintosh Operating System. Formerly known as “OS X”.
Macro Macros are used to automate your workflow, procedure, or process on your Mac. A Macro consists of
  • A set of steps called Actions.
  • One or more Triggers to execute the Macro, if it is Active.
Macro Action an action you wish to perform, such as opening a file, typing some text, controlling Safari, and so on
Macro Group a set of Macros which can be restricted to only a defined set of applications
Macro Palette a floating palette containing any active Macros that have a Macro Palette trigger. The palette only appears in applications with at least once active Macro Palette triggered Macro
Macro Trigger an event, such as a Hot Key, application launch, time of day, that starts the execution of a Macro
Michael Kamprath the original developer of Application Switcher and Keyboard Maestro
Named Clipboard Keyboard Maestro provides a set of named clipboards where you can permanently store information (text, logos, graphics, etc)
Notification Center Mac OS X Mountain Lion introduced a system wide notification center which shows you alerts in the upper-right corner of your screen, without interrupting what you're doing
OS X Apple’s Macintosh operating system versions 10.0 and up
Palette a floating window containing macros that you can trigger. There are several different kinds of palettes and you can style them in various ways
Program Switcher the premier application management utility for Classic Mac OS, written by Michael Kamprath it was in part the inspiration for Keyboard Maestro and forms one of the components of Keyboard Maestro
Quick Macro a macro recorded on the fly in another application. see the Recording section
Record Quick Macro the action that when triggered records a Quick Macro. see the Recording section
Regular Expression aka RegEx, a way of matching strings based on patterns. When Keyboard Maestro refers to “matching” it means by regular expression, in particular ICU Regular Expressions
Sandboxed an Apple technology that limits what an application can do and how it can interface with the rest of the system and other applications. This is great for security for applications that work with just their own data, but is impossible with workflow applications like Keyboard Maestro
Shortcut a Shortcut is another name for a Macro (it is also another name for an Alias but that is a different context to the normal Keyboard Maestro Macro context)
Smart Group a saved search set of Macros
Sorting Characters You can control the sorting order of macros by prefixing two characters and a closing parenthesis to the name, eg “01)My Macro”. The prefix will be removed before displaying in the macro palette or status menu, but will be used to control the order of the macros shown.
Status Menu the icon menus at the right of your menu bar
Text Tokens See Tokens
Tokens tokens allow you to insert dynamic text, such as the current date or time, into various text fields, see the Tokens section
Tokenized see Tokens
Toolbar see Palette
UID see UUID
UUID a Universally Unique IDentifier for Macros and Macro Groups and other purposes that remains the same even if you rename or modify a macro or macro group, or import a Macro built on another Mac. Also known as a GUID.
Variables Like most programming languages, Keyboard Maestro allows you to create Variables to store data for use later on in the same Macro, or in other Macros.
Variables can be set from many actions. You can set variables to specific text, to the result of a calculations, from user input, from the Keychain, by searching other variables, from the clipboard or Named Clipboards, as the result of scripts, and from many other sources.
For more details, see Variables.
Z-order refers to the order of windows from frontmost to furthest back