
By mixing in BetterTouchTool, however, you can overcome this. Hot Keys are great, but you can only have so many keyboard shortcuts to remember and the Palettes set up is kind of ugly. The one area that KeyboardMaestro falls down in is triggers. I’ve got Macros that do everything from automate image uploading and insert them at the correct spots in my articles to opening all the apps I use to work and closing down any that distract me. There is very little you can’t do with it. Keyboard Maestro is the most powerful Mac automation app going.

These sort of physical movements are very quick to perform and easy to remember. There are hundreds of possible combinations of fingers, modifier keys, taps and swipes. With a Mac’s multi-touch track-pad, there are far more than just one or two finger scrolls on offer. You can use an app, keyboard shortcuts, mouse movements, or my favourite, trackpad gestures. Use BetterTouchTool to Trigger Keyboard MaestroīetterTouchTool is great for triggering different things. It introduces most of the apps I’m going to cover and links out to a load of great tutorials where you can learn more.

Launchbar text expansion how to#
If not, check out my tutorial on How to Choose the Right Tools to Automate the Mac.
Launchbar text expansion free#
Feel free to sub in one app for another.Īt this point, I’m assuming you’ve got a pretty complete knowledge of most of the Mac automation apps available. You should take these as a jumping off point, rather than something that’s set in stone. In this tutorial I’ll outline different ways you can combine different automation apps. All the different automation apps can be combined in different ways. It also means that you’re not limited to just one tool. Mixing and matching the different tools is the best way to really customise a Mac. Even the built-in AppleScript and Automator have their uses. Launchbar can open apps, but so can BetterTouchTool they just do it differently.

Sure, you might be able to use Keyboard Maestro as a text expansion app, but TextExpander does it better and is easier to use as well. One thing I’ve seen is that people get fixated on one app or tool. Some do one thing really well and are simple to use, others can do pretty much everything but are super intimidating to get started with. I’ve covered KeyboardMaestro, TextExpander and Hazel in multi-tutorial, deep dives and touched on other apps like Launchbar and BetterTouchTool.Īll these apps have different specialities. I’ve written a lot about automation apps here at Envato Tuts+.
