Posts tagged with "bettertouchtool"

How I Fixed Switching Between Safari Profiles with BetterTouchTool and a Hyper Key

A lot has changed in my professional life over the past year. As of today, I am working fully from home on three separate long-running projects, and now more than ever, the web browser has become central for all three. Since the M2 MacBook Air is my only computer, I found myself in urgent need of a way to allow these virtual workspaces to coexist on the same device.

Fortunately, Apple added profiles to Safari in macOS 14 Sonoma, iOS 17, and iPadOS 17 (then later in visionOS 2). Profiles offer a way to keep your bookmarks, cookies, extensions, and browsing history separate between, say, a Personal profile and a Work profile. Even though Google Chrome and Firefox have had similar solutions in place for a while, Safari remains my web browser of choice, so I wanted to take full advantage of the new feature.

In my prolonged usage, Safari profiles work exactly as intended. I’ve set up four different profiles: a Personal profile and three separate work profiles. They are each logged into a different Google account, and they each have their own set of bookmarks, their own pinned tabs for quick access to relevant tools and web apps, and their own set of extensions. Safari makes it easy enough to tell profile windows apart by allowing you to assign a custom icon and color to each one.

That being said, Safari’s implementation of profiles has one major UI flaw: Apple has made it unusually cumbersome to switch between them on the fly, or even to launch Safari into a specific profile directly. So, to no one’s surprise, I have once again attempted to leverage the power of Mac automation utility BetterTouchTool to come up with a workaround. The solution I’ve arrived at is simple, but it makes a huge difference.

Let me show you.

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Creating a Custom Weather and Home Climate Control Menu Bar App with MenuBot and Shortcuts

Last year, I wrote about how I was able to display the temperature from my outdoor sensor in my Mac’s menu bar using a combination of Shortcuts, SF Symbols, and small utilities like One Thing and Data Jar. I’ve been using this approach ever since, but this summer, I came across a tool that changed that: MenuBot.

MenuBot is an app for the Mac that lets you build your own indicators and applets for your menu bar directly from the output of a shortcut. The app is more powerful than it may seem at first: you can create entire submenus and even tie URLs and actions to each menu entry. In the end, I was able to use it to completely revamp my outdoor temperature indicator in the menu bar and even enhance it with HomeKit controls.

I’ve been having a ton of fun playing with MenuBot. Let me show you what I’ve done with it.

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Club MacStories Sample: BetterTouchTool Tips, Vision Pro Shortcuts, a Task Manager Review, and the Effect of AI on the Internet

We often describe Club MacStories as more of the MacStories you know and love reading on this website. That’s an apt shorthand for the Club, but when you’re being asked to sign up and pay for something, it still helps to see what you’re buying. That’s why every now and then, we like to share samples of some of what the Club has to offer every week.

So today, we’ve made Issue 408 of MacStories Weekly from a couple of Saturdays ago available to everyone. Just use this link, and you’ll get the whole issue. You can also use the links in the excerpts below to read particular articles.

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Issue 408 of MacStories Weekly, which you can access here, starts with two excellent tips from Niléane on how to use BetterTouchTool to remap the Mac’s yellow and green ‘stoplight’ buttons. Like a lot of tips and workflows we share, Niléane’s was inspired by a similar technique Federico employed a couple of weeks before:

Two weeks ago, in Issue 406 of MacStories Weekly, Federico shared a tip for BetterTouchTool that resonated with me. Just like him, I am used to minimizing my windows instead of hiding them, which can be annoying since minimized windows no longer come up when you Command (⌘) + Tab to their app’s icon…

…after poking around in BetterTouchTool for a few minutes, I realized that the app allows you to change what the red, yellow, and green window buttons do. As a result, I was able to make it so that the yellow button will actually hide a window instead of minimizing it to the Dock.

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Three Tips to Combine BetterTouchTool and Raycast for Simpler Keyboard Shortcuts

Raycast is one of my favorite Mac utilities of all time. When I recommend Raycast to someone, I usually like to say that it’s a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. It is an app launcher, a shortcut launcher, a clipboard manager, an emoji picker, and more, all in one single app.

I am also a huge fan of BetterTouchTool on my Mac to fill those interaction gaps that I feel are missing in macOS. I previously wrote on MacStories about how I use BetterTouchTool to manage my windows with the Magic Trackpad and keyboard shortcuts.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the idea of using Raycast and BetterTouchTool together. I found that I can combine the two to create some really simple keyboard shortcuts that would otherwise be impossible to make because they leverage Apple’s special keys on the Magic Keyboard.

I have selected three of these simple keyboard shortcuts to share with you today. Let’s check them out.

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Three Ways to Use BetterTouchTool to Enhance Window Management with a Trackpad

BetterTouchTool is an essential tool that can help anyone streamline their workflows, but I think it really shines when it helps me solve some of my everyday frustrations.

I mainly use a Magic Trackpad at my desk. It’s a great way to navigate a Mac: smooth scrolling, great haptic feedback, and gestures for multitasking with Mission Control. However, Apple has not gone far enough to make the trackpad as useful and easy to use as it could be when it comes to managing windows. So, to fix three tiny window management annoyances, I use BetterTouchTool.

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