58 Macworld • January 2022REVIEWS
to simulate the Home and End
movement keys. (It looks like that was
in Mac OS X 10.8 in 2012.) The app
was a simple and inexpensive way to
regain gestures I used hundreds of
times a day. That barely scratched
the wax polish on top of the surface
of BetterTouchTool.
The app centres around input
methods, assigning trigger sets
to common items like a trackpad,
Magic Mouse or trackpad, regular
mouse, keyboard, and Touch Bar.
But it can also accept inputs from a
paired Siri Remote, MIDI triggers, key
sequences (like a macro or shortcut
app), and even things you draw. If that
doesn’t sound like enough, there’s
also BTT Remote, a way for the app
to receive remote input through a free
iOS app.
In the
simplest
case,
you pick
an input
device,
click ‘+’
to add a
trigger, and
choose at
least one
action that
occurswhen that trigger fires. The number
of actions from which you can select
is fairly huge, drawn from navigation,
typing, system events, Shortcuts,
clicks, and much more. Fortunately,
there’s a convenient search field.
You can also scope triggers to work
only with a particular app in the
foreground, in the Finder or in all apps.
Vastly more complicated
sequences can be built to trigger
and perform actions in ways that
more closely resemble Keyboard
Maestro (or the late, lamented
QuicKeys), TextExpander, LaunchBar
and other automation and shortcut
apps. Each of those apps has a
significantly different purpose from
BetterTouchTool, so it’s more precise
to say BetterTouchTool has a coreYou can set up BetterTouchTool with useful gestures in a few clicks.