This can be very useful and gives you many more shortcut options. if you record cmd+space it would not matter whether you press the left cmd key and the space key or the right cmd key and the space key.īy checking the checkbox 1 (in the screenshot above), you can enable BTT to differentiate between them. Recent versions of BetterTouchTool can differentiate between left and right modifier keys on your keyboard.īy default if you record a shortcut, it works for both, the left and the right modifier keys. Differentiate between left and right modifier keys This works the same as for Gestures in BTT. the ones that show up when changing the volume or brightness on your Mac.). You can make BetterTouchTool display a little HUD overlay (like e.g. to show a HUD overlay, to differentiate between left/right modifier keys, set repeat rates etc. However there are various advanced options, e.g. You can record them and make them do whatever you want by assigning one or multiple actions, which will be triggered as soon as you press the shortcut.įor most use cases recording a shortcut is simple and straight forward. Keyboard Shortcuts are probably one of the most used features in BTT. Shortcuts from the Shortcuts App in the webview Help: My mouse's buttons are not recognizedīTT as Default Browser / URL Based TriggersĪpple Scripts & Shell Scripts in the webview Next week we will talk about window management, which has been a thorn in my side for many years until recently.Trigger Conditions & Conditional Activation Groups There is much more we can do with the Hyper key and BTT, but this is one of my favorite uses. Not only better app switching, but better app launching too. One perk to doing this with BTT is that it will also launch the app if it isn't already open. Go to "keyboard shortcuts", add a new shortcut of your choosing, pick the "Launch Application" action, and choose the application you want to launch/switch to. In BetterTouchTool, here's what that configuration looks like: This makes the change to your process small, and the benefits substantial. You can assign apps as you need them, and give them the most obvious shortcut you can think of. The beauty of this approach is its simplicity. The concept is simple: take your most recently used apps, and assign memorable shortcuts to them using BetterTouchTool, or your application of choice.įor me, here's my short list of apps I swap between frequently, and my chosen shortcuts: Thanks to having this key available to us, we can now set up truly fast and predictable application switching. There Has to be A Better Way #īack to the Hyper key. It’s a good tool to have, but not fast or efficient when it comes to swapping back and forth between applications. The dock has many virtues: it is more consistent than cmd+tab, and has many more actions available than either of the previous solutions. For most of us it sits at the bottom of our screen, with all the currently running apps, and possibly others of our choosing. Mission Control is useful in a pinch, but not a reliable productivity tool. Mouse driven productivity tools can be helpful, but they're never going to have the pure speed that a keyboard driven solution has. But it too has a fatal flaw: it isn't keyboard driven. Mission Control is okay, I would say it requires less thought than cmd+tab in general. Mission Control #įor many years I used Mission Control instead. I stopped using cmd+tab when I became a professional developer, because it wasn't a good enough tool for the job. Both of these methods use more of your brain than they should, and the second method is also slow and breaks you out of your flow.Ĭmd+Tab works well if you're only using two applications. OR you can press cmd+tab, wait for a second, look at the UI, and then continue tabbing until you reach the desired application. This means that there are only two ways to use the tool: either remember what order you last used your apps at all times, so you can switch without looking. The order of the applications changes all the time depending on what app you used most recently. It's surprisingly difficult!Ĭmd-tab is a very finicky way to swap applications. This was the best screenshot I could get. There are essentially three ways to change applications built in to the Mac operating system: Cmd+Tab, Mission Control, and the Dock. What do I mean by "painless"? Why is regular app switching "painful"? Let me explain. One of my favorite uses for the Hyper key is what I call painless application switching. This gave us a whole keyboard of shortcuts all to ourselves, and now we have to figure out what to do with it. The hyper key doesn't actually exist on Macs, but we were able to fabricate it by using other modifiers that are supported by the OS. Last week we talked about creating our own keyboard shortcut "namespace" by creating a "Hyper" key. Your Path to Better Application Switching
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