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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1500862
Keyboard (Shortcut) Maestro If you’ve been around Macs long enough, you’ll remember QuickKeys, the essential tool for automating mindless, repetitive tasks or just replacing a lot of menu-groping with a keystroke. It didn’t survive very long in OS X. Fortunately, Michael Kamprath, also a longtime QuickKeys fan, came up with Keyboard Maestro and took the macro-building concept further and did it far better than its mainstream ancestor. In 2004, it was acquired by electronic distribution pioneer Peter N Lewis of Stairways Software (stairways.com) who then saw the number of users double every three years since. Once you learn the basics of how Maestro builds shortcuts and macros, it becomes fairly easy to knock out the basic ones that you need. Then, you will discover that you can string so much together that it becomes a virtual scripting application that can save lots of clicks and keystrokes. To help you out and provide you with inspiration (not to mention a huge library of shortcuts and macros) the Keyboard Maestro Discourse forum has a wealth of information and a community where you can ask and answer questions. What’s more, at $36, it’s a far better value than QuickKeys was.