Frequently asked questions

It depends on the mode. Desktop Mode uses your real mouse and keyboard, so while it runs you should not touch the computer — the cursor is doing the work.

Browser Mode is different: it controls Chrome through the DevTools Protocol (CDP), sending clicks and keystrokes straight into the page. It does not move your physical cursor, so you can keep browsing, typing, or working in other apps while automation runs in the background. This is the main reason to choose Browser Mode for web tasks.

Browser Mode connects to Chrome over the Chrome DevTools Protocol — the same interface developer tools use. Through it, RunMacro can navigate pages, click and type into elements by selector, read HTML and attributes, and extract data, all inside the browser engine rather than by moving the mouse on screen.

Because it works at the page level, it is more reliable than coordinate clicking (it survives layout changes) and it can run several Chrome windows or profiles at once. It is the right mode for logins, forms, scraping, and multi-account work.

Only for some of it. Plain Browser Mode commands — opening pages, navigating, managing tabs, clicking and typing by selector — run over CDP and work without any extension.

The RunMacro Smart HTML Chrome extension is required for Smart HTML capture, Smart Record, and the visual element picker, because those need to inspect the live page from inside the browser. Since most people use the picker to build web workflows, installing it is recommended. Desktop Mode and RunMacro Runner never need it.

Smart Record watches what you do and turns it into commands automatically — you don’t write selectors by hand. As you click and type, it detects the target elements for you and adds the matching steps to the workflow.

For web elements it also captures a fallback selector, so if the primary one changes the workflow can still find the element. Combined with the visual "Select" picker, this means most users never deal with raw CSS or XPath at all — you point, it captures.

Yes, absolutely. A selector is just the information RunMacro uses to find the right button or input on a page — and you never have to write one. Use the visual "Select" (picker) button: click the element on the page and RunMacro captures it, showing something friendly like "Selected: Email field" instead of a raw code string.

The full technical selector is tucked away under "Details" for advanced users who want it. For everyone else, pointing at the element is all you need.

Browser Mode needs a Chromium-based browser that it can drive over the DevTools Protocol. The default and simplest choice is Google Chrome, so a recent Chrome install covers most users.

If you work with multiple profiles or anti-detect browsers, RunMacro can also connect to GPM Login, AdsPower, Hidemium, Dolphin Anty, GoLogin, and Octo Browser instead of default Chrome. These third-party integrations require a paid license. Firefox and Safari are not supported.

Desktop Mode has no browser requirement at all — it works with any Windows application, so you can automate desktop software without Chrome.

Yes. Browser Mode can drive several Chrome windows or profiles in parallel, which is how people run the same workflow across many accounts at once. Each profile keeps its own cookies and login, so sessions stay separate.

The practical limit is your machine’s resources: each Chrome window uses RAM and CPU, so keep the number reasonable for your hardware. Start with a few in parallel and scale up while watching performance.

Describe the task in plain language. AI opens the page in background Chrome (CDP), observes its structure, and prepares a normal workflow of editable commands for you to preview. AI assists; you decide what to accept, change, and run.

Nothing runs against your data until you approve it, and every generated step remains reviewable. After approval, the generated workflow runs as standard commands without requiring continuous AI or token use, avoiding unnecessary recurring AI cost.

Yes — that is exactly what it is for. When an app exposes no web-style selector (legacy software, remote desktops, games, custom tools), Desktop Mode operates it visually: it clicks by coordinates, finds on-screen images with Find Image, matches colors with Find Multi-color, and can read text on screen with OCR.

So even a program that gives you nothing to hook into can still be automated, because RunMacro drives it the same way a person would — by looking at the screen and using the mouse and keyboard.

Yes. Switching the library to the Basic view only changes which commands appear when you add new ones — it never removes commands from existing macros. Any workflow you already built keeps all its steps and runs exactly as before.

Advanced commands inside older macros stay visible and functional; the Basic/Advanced toggle is purely about keeping the "add command" list simple for newcomers, not about disabling anything.

Yes. The built-in scheduler runs packaged RunMacro workflows automatically, with several trigger types: once at a set time, daily, weekly, every N minutes, after a countdown, or at Windows startup.

This is how people run unattended jobs — a nightly report, a check every fifteen minutes, or a task that starts with the machine. Scheduling is a paid feature; see the Pricing page for the plan comparison.

Yes, in two ways. You can set a loop count (or infinite loop) so the whole workflow repeats, with a hotkey to stop it. Inside a workflow, the Loop command plus Label and Goto let you repeat just a section, and conditions decide when to break out.

For list-driven work, point the workflow at a data source — a CSV or Excel file, or an online Google Sheet — and it processes one row per iteration. That is the standard way to fill a form for a hundred records or run the same steps across many accounts.

Yes. Workflows can read rows from local CSV and Excel files and write results back out, which covers most data-entry and scraping jobs. Google Sheets is supported too, both for pulling values and for update or delete operations.

Each row becomes variables your steps can use, so one workflow handles an entire list without you duplicating commands. See the Network & Data documentation for the specific commands.

RunMacro Manager is a web control plane (at manager.runmacro.app) for running your packaged workflows across several Windows machines from one browser. A Manager Agent built into RunMacro on each machine reports status, receives commands, downloads the pinned Package, and hands it to RunMacro Runner to execute locally — Manager coordinates, but each workflow still runs on the target machine with that machine’s environment and permissions.

It suits teams and power users who operate the same automation on a fleet: dispatch Jobs, schedule them, chain them into pipelines, and review bounded logs and results centrally. It is a paid capability tied to your workspace license; see the RunMacro Manager guide for full setup.

Activate the same workspace license on each target machine and open RunMacro. The Manager Agent connects automatically and the machine shows Online — there is no manual connect button, and no Windows service is installed. Closing RunMacro simply makes the machine Offline; it does not release the license seat.

Sign in to manager.runmacro.app with that workspace license to see every bound Machine ID. To move a license to a different machine, release the key on the machine that holds the seat, because going Offline alone never frees a seat. Optionally enable "Start Manager Agent with Windows" so RunMacro is ready right after sign-in.

Manager reads its Package catalog from a GitHub Gist — the same Gist that RunMacro Studio publishes to (Cloud Sync / Export RunMacro package) and that RunMacro Runner reads when checking for updates. Point Manager at that one Gist ID and everyone shares the same catalog; Refresh Catalog pins each Package by revision and SHA-256, and the Gist token is stored encrypted server-side and never exposed to the browser.

If a Package was exported with a password, Create Job shows a Package password field. Enter that password there — the remote Runner will not pop up a dialog. Leave the export password blank (app-key encryption) when you do not want to type it for every Job.

Yes. Besides Run now and time-based schedules (Once, Daily, Weekly), Manager has a Run after mode where you pick a source that is either a Job or a Schedule. A Job source triggers the dependent once when that Job finishes; a Schedule source re-triggers it every time the source schedule produces a finished Job, which is ideal for recurring pipelines.

Turn on "Only run if source succeeds" to trigger only when the source ends in success; leave it off (the default) to run regardless of the outcome. Manager records pipeline lineage (parent, root, depth), rejects cycles when you link, and will not let you delete a source Schedule while dependents still exist. See the RunMacro Manager guide for details.