Hello,
I guess I know the answer to my question already, but who knows, I might be surprised, or this post might inspire someone to make something.
Does someone know of a tool to lookup and activate items located in the menus of menu bar items on macOS?
As mentioned in other posts, when it comes to controlling my mac, I try to use my keyboard for everything using a wide range of tools, the main ones being:
- Alfred → files & web search + dozens of custom workflows
- Paletro → app menus search
- bartender → global menu bar items search
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Hook → context links search
(I also use other tools to a lesser extent or to experiment: Raycast, Command E and others)
The one area that I can’t seem to reach is any menu item from elements in the menu bar: bartender 4 lets us search these elements in the menu bar by name and activate them and that’s already way more convenient than fumbling with the mouse:
But what would be great would be to search within said elements’ menus using a palette search.
For example, with Hookshot, the menu is super long and would make a great use-case for such a feature:
I would type “third” and be presented with all the matching menu items and activate them in a few keystrokes.
I know that in that very case, I could assign hotkeys to Hookshot functionalities but:
-
- I am running out of available keys
-
- The whole purpose of palettes is to let me forget hotkeys and instead rely on keywords which is much more suited for functionalities use less often
An alternative that does not scale would be to create macros activating these menus in KM or Alfred to look them up by name, but it would be counter-productive…
There might be a technical limitation: looking at some menu items (Snagit, Control Center, ClearVPN, etc.), it would seem that MacOS allows menus with custom layouts that might not be targettable by the usual automation mechanisms.
