Down the keyboad shortcut rabbit hole
I first got into keyboard shortcuts with simple macOS triggers, such as @@ for my primary email address, and similar ones for my full name, home address, phone number, zip code, and so on.
Then, I decided to take things up a notch with Keyboard Maestro and started setting keyboard shortcuts to open a few of the folders and programs I used more often.
From the Desktop to Downloads to folders related to work, it became pure muscle memory to press Fn+F1 all the way to Fn+F6, to instantly land where it used to take me a few clicks before. The other function buttons were dedicated to opening frequent programs and websites, as well as accessing Keyboard Maestro’s Clipboard History Switcher.
That evolved into automating some of my workflow, including opening QuickTime and starting a new audio recording, as well as opening Shure PlusMOTIV whenever I plugged in a specific USB-C microphone.
Kicking things up a notch
When it arrived, I quickly learned that setting it up to work correctly on macOS required some additional work. Thankfully, this GitHub project did all the heavy lifting, and ChatGPT did the rest to help me set it up properly.
Granted, it did take me a bit to memorize all of these commands, but that becomes second nature more quickly than you’d think. More than that, it honestly feels like the Mac is broken when I have to work without that.
