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Recording allows Keyboard Maestro to watch you as you perform a task and create the actions to produce a similar result.
The Record Quick Macro action is a variant of this that you can activate at any time without launching Keyboard Maestro. Trigger the recording, perform a series of actions, then turn off recording. Then press the associated hot key to replay the recording.
By default, Keyboard Maestro creates a macro triggered by Control-F1 which executes the Record Quick Macro action with a hot key of Option-F1. So for example, if you press Control-F1 to start quick recording, type “hello” and then press Control-F1 again to finish recording, then Keyboard Maestro will type “hello” each time you press Option-F1.
Because you cannot see or edit the recorded actions, it is best to keep them very simple. A good rule of thumb would be not to touch the mouse, just use the keyboard.
For example, say you wanted to quote a dozen different words in a paragraph, you could click in the middle of the first word, press Control-F1 to start quick recording, type Option-Left Arrow, quote (“), Option-Right Arrow, quote (”), and then Control-F1 again to finish recording. Now click in the middle of each remaining word and press Option-F1.
Keyboard Maestro automatically includes an implicit Semaphore at the start of the recorded macro so that you can trigger the resulting macro quickly multiple times and it will execute sequentially.
