The Execute an AppleScript action executes a specified AppleScript, either from a file or text. For example, say “hello”.
The results of an AppleScript can be:
For the latest update on this topic, see the User Manual article: Scripting.
This provides the latest method to get and set Keyboard Maestro variables via AppleScript.
AppleScripts are executed in the background via osascript. This means they are not allowed to do user interaction. You can work around this by asking an application like System Events to do the user interaction for you, for example:
tell application "System Events" activate display dialog "Hello" end tell
See Using AppleScript to Get and Set Keyboard Maestro Variables for best methods.
In AppleScript with Keyboard Maestro Version 7.1+, you can tell the application “Keyboard Maestro Engine” to:
getvariable <KM Variable Name> setvariable <KM Variable Name> to <New Value>
where both the <KM Variable Name>
and <New Value>
are text values.
For example:
tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine" to set myVar to getvariable "My KM Variable"
Using Keyboard Maestro Variables in a Shell Script from AppleScript
AppleScripts can access variables by using environment variables (using system attribute) or by talking to the Keyboard Maestro Engine. Note that AppleScript’s system attribute is not safe for international characters, although it can use code like:
set myVar to do shell script "echo $KMVAR_My_KM_Variable"