I bought Keyboard Maestro back in 2018 after reading good things about it, but have yet been able to make much use of it. This is partly because a lot of software that I’ve already added to my life does what KM does: Launchbar, TextExpander, PasteBot, and others. I have the feeling that I’m only considering a fraction of what it can do.

One of the features that I played with a bit is the application switcher. Keyboard Maestro hijacks one of my most-used keyboard commands, Command-Tab, and shows a grid of running applications over a turquoise background. You can continue to tab over the application icons, or mouse to your selection.

Keyboard Maestro’s Default App Switcher

As with all things Keyboard Maestro, you can customize the background color of the palette, the size of the icons, and more: vertical alignment? Sure. Familiar horizontal row? Of course. Transparent black background? By all means, yes please.

Keyboard Maestro’s Horizontal App Switcher

Keyboard Maestro’s Vertical App Switcher

I very much like this version of the app switcher, and I was ready to have it replace the system default. There is, however, at catch: Shift-Command-Tab does not move your selection in reverse. Tapping the shift key cycles backwards (to the left), but I have too many years of muscle memory for that to work for me.