Ever since I set up my iMac, I’ve been having a few hiccups with Keyboard Maestro.

Some of my macros work, but not all of them. And Keyboard Maestro keeps telling me it needs to be given accessibility permissions in Yosemite’s System Preferences even though I’ve already granted the app permissions.

Turns out, this is a common problem if you install or migrate Keyboard Maestro to a computer that has a clean install of Yosemite. The problem is that though Keyboard Maestro itself is being granted accessibility permissions, the Keyboard Maestro Engine is not getting those permissions. Thus, it has issues running in the background.

But! There is a fix. These steps outlined by the KM developer, Peter Lewis, worked for me:

Generally you can force the system to add Keyboard Maestro Engine with this sequence:

  • Open the System Preferences → Security & Privacy preferences.
  • Switch to the Accessibility settings.
  • In the Finder, control click on Keyboard Maestro.app, and choose Show Package Contents.
  • Drill down into Contents / Resources and find the Keyboard Maestro Engine.app
  • Switch back to System Preferences.
  • Click the Lock icon in the bottom left and enter your admin password.
  • Drag the Keyboard Maestro Engine.app into the list.

Even if nothing appears in that last stage, it may still have worked. Launch Keyboard Maestro and see if the setting is actually enabled, and if not, try restarting.

Yosemite Accessibility Permission Problems with Keyboard Maestro