Download Keyboard Maestro for Mac

In the edit

Keyboard Maestro is a macro automation utility for macOS that lets you build custom shortcuts to handle the repetitive stuff so you can stay behind the camera (or the keyboard) and keep shooting or editing.

Automate cross-app workflows

You can chain actions across apps and websites: open a web page, grab text, paste it into an email, then trigger a file export — all from one key press. Hundreds of built-in actions mean you rarely need to write anything from scratch.

Fill web forms in a blink

For photographers who manage client portals, booking systems or gallery uploads, Keyboard Maestro fills forms automatically. Store common entries and map them to a shortcut; the macro handles the typing.

Convert and reformat text on the fly

When you need to rename batches, reformat captions or clean up metadata, a macro can transform text as you paste it. No more retyping the same thing twice.

Cull 1,200 wedding photos with a single key combination

Picture a Saturday in August. You’ve just returned from a twelve-hour shoot, and you’ve got 1,200 RAW files to cull, edit and deliver to the couple by Tuesday. Before you even open Capture One, you hit a single key combination: Keyboard Maestro launches the app, opens last night’s import folder and arranges your preview and editing windows side by side. That’s one macro, triggered once, saving you the forty-five seconds of clicking around that you’d normally do before the first edit.

Later, when you’re renaming files for the online gallery, you copy a client’s name from your CRM and paste it into a text field. The macro catches the clipboard, strips any trailing spaces, adds the date and the shoot number, then pastes the clean result. You do this for every folder. By the end of the session, you’ve saved maybe ten minutes of fiddling — but it’s the kind of fiddling that breaks your concentration and slows you down when you’re in a rhythm.

Start with one task you repeat three times daily

Start small. Pick one task you do at least three times a day — opening your editing app, resizing a window, pasting a standard email response — and build a macro for that. Don’t try to automate everything on day one. Keyboard Maestro has a lot of depth, and you’ll learn faster if you focus on one macro at a time.

Use the built-in macro library. It comes with dozens of pre-made examples that show you how actions work. Open one, see how it’s structured, then tweak it for your own workflow. That’s how most people get comfortable with conditions and loops without reading a manual.

Give your macros descriptive names and assign them keyboard shortcuts you can remember. I use Cmd-Shift- for most of mine, and I keep a sticky note on my monitor until they become muscle memory.

Deeper text manipulation and flow control than BetterTouchTool

BetterTouchTool is excellent for trackpad gestures, window snapping and customising your input devices, but its automation engine is lighter. You can trigger actions with gestures, but you won’t find the same depth of text manipulation, clipboard history or flow control. Keyboard Maestro is built for chaining dozens of steps together; BetterTouchTool is built for quick physical interactions.

Hazel shines at file organisation — it watches folders and moves, renames or deletes files automatically based on rules. That’s a different kind of automation: set-and-forget, not triggered by a hotkey. Hazel and Keyboard Maestro actually complement each other well. Hazel handles your Downloads folder while Keyboard Maestro handles the active tasks you initiate.

Shortcuts (the macOS app that replaced Automator) is Apple’s own take on automation, and it’s getting better with every OS update. It’s free and it integrates deeply with system services. But for power users who need granular control, conditions, loops and the ability to interact with almost any app’s UI, Keyboard Maestro is still the deeper tool. Shortcuts is great for quick automations; Keyboard Maestro is for the ones you build over weeks and refine for years.

Open and arrange four apps across two monitors in one macro

It’s Monday morning. You sit down to process a client gallery, and you start by triggering your “Morning Setup” macro. It opens Safari, Mail, your editing app and your invoicing tool, then arranges them on two monitors — editing app on the main screen, everything else on the secondary. That macro alone replaces four or five minutes of dragging windows around.

Next, you need to email a questionnaire to a new client. You hit Cmd-Shift-Q, and Keyboard Maestro opens a new message in Mail, pastes a template you wrote last year, inserts the client’s name from a text file you dropped into the macro’s setup and adds a link to your calendar. You just fill in the date and hit send.

Mid-afternoon, you’re editing a set of portraits and you keep needing to switch between a tight crop and a full-frame view. Instead of reaching for the menu bar every time, you assign two keys — one for each view — and flip between them without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. It’s a small thing, but over a three-hour edit session it adds up to real time saved.

Later, you need to upload a final gallery to a client portal. The web form asks for the couple’s name, the date, a password and a thank-you note. You hit your form-fill macro, and Keyboard Maestro types everything into the right fields. You review it, click submit, and you’re done. No tabbing through fields, no copying from a notes file.

At the end of the day, you run a macro that closes every app except the one you’re still using, empties the trash and logs your hours into a spreadsheet. Then you shut down with one key press. The machine does the rest.

That’s the kind of session Keyboard Maestro makes possible. Not a single dramatic automation — just a dozen small ones that, together, turn a busy day into a manageable one.

New this release

• Added display to Switch/Case actions to indicate which entries are true or would execute currently.
• Support Apple Text Recognition in OCR Condition.
• Added Tool Tips for Macro Debugger window.
• Fixed an issue with search highlighting triggers.

Mac it needs

• macOS 10.13 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon