BetterTouchTool workflows

Hoping our BTT users will share some interesting BTT workflows?

Personally, in almost a similar fashion to KM, I find it can do so much, that half my problem is thinking of ways to actually use it – hello analysis paralysis!

After watching SCO’s BTT tutorial, in light of my Magic Trackpad 2 arriving tomorrow, I played around a little bit with some of BTT’s features.

One I thought I would share:

A few months back, saw a post from the developer, about a new Floating HTML window, that could be triggered by BTT.

It looked interesting, but after giving it a go, I was a bit lost, not knowing terribly much about CSS or anything even remotely ‘progamming’ related.
So I left it, thinking I would come back to it at some point.

Well, as mentioned - I gave it another go.
After tinkering around, I managed to hack together something that sees me call it up in DTPO, after selecting text, and clicking on the appropriate colour.
BTT then invokes the corresponding highlighter insider DTPO, to then highlight the text.

Emphasis on hack – it was supposed to have my own icons, but I botched the URL link, and they disappeared completely. Turns out, I preferred the buttons without icons, so left it as is!

This isn’t exactly the best use-case for this, compared to what else is being done with it, but it’s my ‘first’ CSS/HTML hack, so there’s that! :sunglasses:

And, given how silly my highlighting habits are, I switch colours frequently, so this does help.
Granted, my approach is less of a pain on iOS, but was always annoying on the Mac, regardless of the application being used – so this at least makes things easier.

See below for a little GIF (which I hope will display properly), created using the excellent (and free) GIF Brewery 3.

DTPO%20highlighting%20-%20BTT

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Wow! Did not know that BTT could do that. Cool. :point_down::rabbit2::hole:

After experimenting with the Floating HTML Menu, it felt like the animation was a bit slow. You can speed things up by opening up the HTML/CSS code and modifying all values that have time values in the pattern XXXms, i.e. 200ms or 680ms. I divided each value by 4 and it made everything much snappier.

I only have a few gestures, mostly for tab navigating in browsers/Finder…

  • TipTap Left to move to tab on left
  • TipTap Right to move to tab on right
  • TipTap Center to reopen last closed tab
  • 4 Finger Swipe Down to close a tab
  • 4 Finger Tap over a link to open in new tab

Thanks for the tip on Floating HTML Menu.

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@Cowpi Awesome. Will give that a go - they could certainly do with a bit of a speed boost!

I don’t use BTT nearly as much as I could or should with my Magic Trackpad 2. My primary gestures are

  • Corner FORCE Click Bottom Left: Move Window Left
  • Corner FORCE Click Bottom Right: Move Window Right
  • Rotate left: volume down
  • Rotate right: volume up

I used to use a gesture to put an app into full-screen mode but I found I rarely used it with my 27" iMac.

In Mail I have a 4 Finger Swipe Left acting as Command-Delete.

FYI if you have a MBP with Touchbar there’s an interesting Reddit thread from last year with all sorts of BTT customizations.

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Wow, that’s really inventive! Kudos for that :slight_smile:

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There’s a 15% off BTT by using MACSPARKYBTT during checkout. That’s a cool $3 off for the lifetime license of $20. You can buy yourself a nice latte.

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My two most used BTT trackpad gestures, which work nicely with key-commands via Moom or Magnet shift windows to the left or right edges of my screen:

As an automation junkie, I’m watching this thread with interest. I feel like there’s so much I could be doing with BTT (and Keyboard Maestro, for that matter). I’m half-tempted to purchase a Magic Trackpad 2 just to make myself learn…

Episode 20 of Automators had quite a few tips from Brett Terpstra on how he uses BTT:

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I just watched the SCO tutorial as well. Through this group, I had heard so much about BTT but I didn’t have it until very recently. I felt like I was missing out. After watching the tutorial, my head is spinning because I want to do so much with it. I need to take a breath and decide what makes the most sense. I’m not going to remember 20 new gestures overnight!

I find the ability to draw things to be possibly really powerful because that would be easy to remember (versus multiple finger clicks and swipes). I also love the idea of stringing a bunch of commands together.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here but this is all really impressive.

I’m with you. I started small, for instance I use two finger swipe up and down to scroll a website. So it, natural for me to have two finger down with the third finger tap to Refresh a website. And to have one finger down and tap the right finger to move to the right tab, or tap left finger to move to the left tap.

And slowly work my way through there by adding one or two new gestures as and when I need it.