Assigning global keyboard shotcuts for cross-application behaviour?

Question

On PC: To open Chrome, the command was Win+3, a new window was Shift+Win+3.

It just occurred to me how much I relied on this. How can I have something as beautiful and simple as this on Mac? It should try to open the most recently active window, but should avoid changing Spaces as that is super disorienting. It shouldn't disorient.

Can I write a custom macro? Or program? Or command? Or ANYTHING to have this work on Mac?

Answer 1

macOS should get you up to speed a lot quicker.

See macOS Sierra: Create keyboard shortcuts for apps for creating custom keyboard short cuts:

You can create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands. You can’t create keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks, such as opening an app.

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Shortcuts.
2. Select App Shortcuts on the left, click the Add button , click the Application pop-up menu, then choose a specific app or All Applications. If you want to set a shortcut for a menu command that appears in many apps, choose All Applications.
3. In the Menu Title field, type the menu command for which you want to create a shortcut, exactly as the command appears in the app, including the > character (type ->), ellipses (type three periods without spaces or press Option-;), or other punctuation.
4. Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field, press the key combination that you want to use as the keyboard shortcut, then click Add.

Answer 2

While you know how to assign new shortcuts for opening the app I have a solution to open new "Chrome" window if it is not present on current Space or activate the "Chrome" on current space. This AppleScript will prevent you from switching the spaces:

if application "Google Chrome" is running then
    tell application "System Events" to set CurrentSpaceWindows to windows of process "Google Chrome"
    if CurrentSpaceWindows is {} then
        tell application "Google Chrome"
            make new window
            activate
        end tell
    else
        tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
    end if
else
    tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
end if

You can now assign a global shortcut to run this script and get what you want (If I understood you correctly).

I personally prefer to use BetterTouchTool to assign keyboard and other shortcuts. You can directly assign a shotcut to run this script.

EDIT: add a posibility to run it from an Automator.

In order to run it via Automator Service, you have to create it like so:

Please note, that I've left the whole part:

on run {input, parameters}

<- Here goes the Script

    return input
end run

Later go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy and add Automator to the Accessibility section like this:

Then it should work as expected, I've tested it and it works.