*(This post is a part of a series on Keyboard Maestro, [see more here](http://brooksreview.net/tag/KM-SERIES/).)*
One of the things that I have always loved doing is saving quotes. The problem for me has aways been where to save those quotes. As it turns out, I don’t often go back and read the quotes — they are more like things that I use as future references. I have some quotes in dedicated apps — never to be seen again — others in Yojimbo and Pinboard and none of these solutions work well for me.
All I want is a bunch of quotes strung together, so I decided to craft a way to save quotes with Keyboard Maestro and a hot key trigger.
Doing this is actually pretty simple: all the quotes end up in the same text file and the end result looks pretty decent for viewing.
Here’s what my macro grabs:
– The quoted text.
– The current date.
– The URL of the quoted text.
All of that info is dumped into one file as an append action. The process is actually very simple.
## The Macro
As you can see this macro is exceedingly simple, but it assumes you have already selected the text you want to quote.
1. The first thing the macro does is copy the selected text using `CMD+C`.
2. Next the macro saves that copied text to a named clipboard called `Quoted Text`. (Hint: to create named clipboards just select the `Save Clipboard to Named Clipboard` action and in the chooser for the named clipboard, select `New`. You can also edit these in the preferences for Keyboard Maestro.)
3. I then simulate the keystroke `CMD+L`, which highlights the current URL in Safari and Chrome.
4. Again, just copying that URL and setting it to another named clipboard — this time called `URL`.
5. The last part is to append this text to our file. So I have set the following to append to the file:
{OPT+Return}
---
{OPT+Return}
"%NamedClipboard%Quoted Text%" | saved %ShortDate% %ShortTime%
{OPT+Return}(%NamedClipboard%URL%)
I couldn’t get the command `%Return%` play nice in TextMate 2, so I added carriage returns by using `OPT+RETURN` when entering the text.
That’s it, now every time you invoke the command your text, URL, and dated added is appended to one text file. I personally find this much more useable than a dedicated app because I store it in Dropbox and can get to it from anywhere.
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