This documentation is for Macro Recorder v3 beta. Click here the for current production version 2 documentation.
Settings
Click "" to open the program settings:
Recording
Record mouse paths
Macro Recorder records mouse clicks including the mouse path in between those clicks. If you don't need the movements for your automation tasks, you can disable tracking the actual path to minimize the macro file size.
Automations may depend on mouse hover events in your 3rd party application. If the automation does only playback clicks without the mouse movements, mouse hover events may not be triggered, such as menus that appear if you hover with the mouse over icons, etc.
Unless, you have a strong need to minimize the macro recording file, we recommend not to disable mouse path recording as you can filter mouse paths on demand.
Minimum mouse movement
Macro Recorder captures each X/Y mouse coordinate if the mouse is moved the minimum distance as defined by parameter "".
Decreasing this value increases the number of captured mouse positions, thus increasing the mouse movement accuracy. However, as even tiny mouse movements are sampled, this results in a larger macro file size.
Low values increase accuracy of the mouse recording.
yHigher values values reduce the number of sampled mouse positions, thus decreases the precision for a smaller file size. If your macro includes mouse hover related tasks, make sure, that the mouse movement accuracy is set properly to hit the hover sensitive positions.
Mouse sensitivity
"" determines the time rate for scanning the current mouse position. The higher the sampling rate, the higher the accuracy of the mouse recording.
Decrease this value only if the mouse recording requires too much CPU power on your computer.
Keyboard
Ignore multiple modifier key down events
Option "" ignores multiple key down events when pressing keyboard shortcuts.
Explanation: If you press the hotkey CTRL + ALT + S for example, the operating system is continuously firing key down events for the modifier keys until you release the keys. However, in most cases, only one key down event would be sufficient.
A few games may take advantage of the repetitive key down events, so you can opt to not filter those events.
Miscellaneous
Parameter "" defines the minimum time threshold, before to a new action item is added during a recording.
Example: If you move the mouse, make a pause and then continue to move the mouse, the parameter determines that the pause causes the action to break into two separate mouse movements.
Playback
In the playback settings, you can configure whether the Macro Recorder stops the playback of an automation when you move your mouse or press a key.
You can also control whether keystrokes are forwarded to the current remote application during automation playback.
A macro recording contains information about the window size and position of recorded applications. You can configure Macro Recorder to restore the program window before launching the macro playback.
In case of problems with the mouse, for example in games, you may experiment with use of relative mouse coordinates and also try the "virtual key" option.
Hotkeys
Don't underestimate the power of hotkeys in Macro Recorder!
Hotkeys allow you to record/start/stop macros with a single press of a key and while the Macro Recorder program window can stay minimized which prevents it getting in the way.
You must use a key together with a combination of the SHIFT, ALT and/or CTRL key, e.g. CTRL+ALT+F9.
Hotkey "" captures the mouse coordinate for the "mouse click" action and the mouse coordinate and color underneath of the "pixel detection" action, both without affecting the underlying application window.
The default capture hotkey is the space bar.
Playback can always be stopped by pressing ESC, regardless if you configure an additional custom hotkey.
To launch individual macro scripts by hotkey, please use Macro Recorder together with our typing productivity solution "PhraseExpress".
User interface
For most macro recording and playback tasks, you actually don't need access to the main program window and can configure it to launch minimized to the task/menu bar.
We recommend to configure hotkeys to control Macro Recorder with a few keyboard shortcuts.
You can also configure the user interface language.
OpenAI
Using OpenAI requires an "API key" which you receive after registering an account at OpenAI.com. The API key must be entered in the Macro Recorder settings section "OpenAI":
To enter the API key:
- Register an account at OpenAI.com.
- Go to your OpenAI user profile and create a personal "API key" (example: 43943f3fd-r46f-0kqeb-55c-6lk3l2s183ab8).
- Copy & paste the API key into the Macro Recorder settings above.
A green check mark indicates successful activation in Macro Recorder.
Keep your API key at a safe place. Macro Recorder stores the key with encryption. You will not be able to restore it from there.
If the API key is not accepted, check if you mistyped or copied extra characters or spaces. Also, check your account status with OpenAI.
Macro Recorder sends the text over the internet to the "OpenAI" online service (OpenAI privacy policy).
Macro Recorder itself does not perform the AI processing but integrates the 3rd party service OpenAI into the user interface. Fees may apply for each text processing. Please contact OpenAI for OpenAI support. Due to the early stage of AI technology, the text output can be nonsense. Please consider the feature experimental. It is provided "as-is" and it is not part of the official Macro Recorder specification.
Adding OCR languages
By default, the OCR feature supports a selection of languages. As the OCR feature is based on the project Tesseract, you can download and add additional languages offered at the Tesseract project page.
To add additional languages:
- Download the desired *.traineddata language file(s).
- Exit Macro Recorder.
- Copy the downloaded *.traineddata file into the Macro Recorder program folder "%programfiles(x86)%\MacroRecorder\tessdata\" (without "").
- Restart Macro Recorder.
The added languages should now be offered in the language selector of the OCR action dialog.