Keyboard Maestro Global Macro Palette
Using Keyboard Maestro Global Macro Palette in iTerm
In my first job out of college, I was using a Window's Terminal Emulator solution that allowed me to have floating button palette. Can't recall the name, but similar to PowerTerm . The buttons were configurable to type out anything I wanted. This made it easy to type out frequent commands.
Well you can pretty much achieve the exact same experience today with Keyboard Maestro. You can create a group that is only active for the application that you are using - in my case its iTerm2.
Basic Configuration
Setup a New Group in Keyboard Maestro and call it 'iTerm' or whatever the name of the application that you want the button functionality to appear.
Make sure under 'Available in these Applications' that the application you want the pallet to appear in is selected.
Create a bunch of Type Macros of common tasks. Think of different queries that you run on the command line. Make sure to have a good Macro Name so you can identify the action.
Enable the action to be triggered by the Global Macro Pallet. What's nice is that you can have an icon in the palette which makes it easy to identify actions.
Sample Entry
Super Productive
Having the floating pallet is great. It's nicely hidden away until I mouse over the floating icon. So the screen isn't cluttered and the pallet appears only when I need it.
My pallet is small - for now, but I suspect that I will add things as needed. Certainly a time saver.
The pallet is better for me than to have to remember the various text trigger actions. The action is just a point and click away!