I would like a way to start and stop Piezo without having to switch to the app itself. In an ideal world it would have a menu bar icon that I could click but alas it does not. Any ideas?
I’m no automation expert. I do have Keyboard Maestro, however. I just am not sure that I could get some kind of icon in the menu bar to trigger the macro. Can KM display a clickable icon in the menu bar?
I have also researched a bit and found that Piezo still needs to be brought to the front before recording can be toggled. That would be fine as long as its a split second.
As an alternative, does anyone know of a simple 1 button recorder that has this functionality? Everything else about Piezo is perfect and I need it to always save its recording to Dropbox without any user action.
Keyboard Maestro will definitely help you here. It can’t script an un-scriptable app, but it can click all the buttons and press any of the keyboard shortcuts that you need.
You can also trigger any Keyboard Maestro macro via Keyboard Maestro’s own menu bar item, or a global keyboard shortcut, your choice.
The Keyboard Maestro macro would work something like this:
Launch Piezo (it won’t hurt even if Piezo is already running)
Pause Until the front app is Piezo
Press the keyboard shortcut to start or stop recording (ideally Piezo uses the same keyboard shortcut for both, so you can just emulate that)
Hide Piezo
For a trigger you’ll want to use “Status Menu” (which is what Keyboard Maestro uses as a name for the menu bar) and a “Hot Key” if you want a global keyboard shortcut.
You might also want to change Keyboard Maestro’s preferences (under the “General” tab). I prefer “Display Status Menu” set to “Hierarchically”.