Using TextExpander inside Keyboard Maestro Macros

As a college professor, I use a learning management tool called Moodle. When I'm in grading mode, I love to use Keyboard Maestro to help navigate the various boxes related to the Moodle grading template. You can add the grade, text feedback, files, and several items like this for any assignment. I use Keyboard Maestro to navigate to the grading page on Moodle for any given class. I then tab through the input boxes that I typically use, inserting text along the way and then finally pushing the save button, which automatically moves me to the next student. This automation saves tons of time when I have many assignments to grade, particularly when I enter similar text in the "feedback" box.

I use TextExpander to input several standard feedback comments related to my grades on an assignment.

What has been a challenge is using TextExpander snippets inside of a Keyboard Maestro macro. Typing the shortcut inside the macro expands the text. I couldn't figure out a way to overcome that problem. Of course, Keyboard Maestro has some excellent text expansion tools, but I wanted these two apps to work in unison.

I found a simple solution to this that others may find helpful. Experts in these apps probably know about this, but my solution was to break up the text expansion snippet into two separate actions within the Keyboard Maestro macro. Bingo!

After using the Tab Keystroke action to get to the appropriate box inside the Moodle grading page, I used the "Insert Text" action but added only half the TextExpander snippet. I followed this with a second "Insert Text" action with the remainder of the snippet and used a "Pause for 1 Second" action to allow the snippet to expand. It worked beautifully.

Please let me know if there is a more straightforward way to do this. But my somewhat Neanderthal method has allowed TextExpander to play very nicely inside Keyboard Maestro macros.

These are two of my absolute favorite automation apps on the Mac, and I am thankful I've made them play in the same sandbox.

Here is a partial screenshot of the macro I used with the TextExpander snippet broken into two separate “Insert Text” actions.

Change the Name of your iPhone

Recently, I was on a Zoom call with several colleagues, and a participant showed up on the call from an anonymous “iPhone.” We had no idea who it was, so we stopped the meeting to inquire and make sure that the person was supposed to be on the call. It was, but the person indicated that they did not know how to change the name of their phone. Unidentified iPhones can be a problem, both for calls like this and also when you try to share a file or photo via Airdrop (a preferred method for sharing files or photos). In a crowded place, it can be nearly impossible to identify the recipient if the user’s phone does not have some clear identifier beyond “iPhone.”

Changing the name on your iPhone is an easy fix, so here is a short video tutorial to help.

Make a PDF from a Pages, Word or Google Doc

At my college, we use the document management system called Moodle. It is not the greatest course management system out there, but it is free, and many colleges choose to use it. When students upload documents to Moodle, they can do so as Word, Pages, or Google Docs, and they can also use plain text. But when professors interact with these docs, it is incredibly clunky because the documents need to be downloaded before anyone can read them. Uploading PDF files makes this process so much easier because the system can render a PDF without downloading the document. So I created a little tutorial for students who might not know how to save a document as a PDF file. This tip might seem obvious for many, but it is surprising how many students have no idea how to do this. So for them, here you go. Enjoy.