Andreas Hegenberg

• Data Format Change
  • This is internally a very big update. It completely changes the BetterTouchTool data model in order to support syncing to multiple machines (e.g. via Dropbox). The sync functionality is not yet enabled in this version, but will be very soon if everything goes well.
  • This version migrates your previous BetterTouchTool data file to the new format, you shouldn’t notice this migration.
  • In case anything goes wrong during the data migration: don’t worry. BTT automatically creates backups. Please contact me in case anything goes wrong (best via Github).
• New Preset System
  • Completely new Preset system. Presets are now exported and imported as JSON (thus they can e.g. be edited in a text editor if necessary).
  • You can now have multiple presets enabled at the same time, one of them has to be selected as master preset.
  • Completely changed the “Switch to Preset” predefined action in order to support the new preset system.
• New JSON based Copy & Paste
  • Copy & Paste is now also JSON based.
  • You can copy single gestures by pressing cmd+c
  • You can copy all gestures of an app by selecting the app and pressing cmd+c
  • You can copy a app including all of it’s gestures and settings by selecting the app and pressing cmd+shift+c
  • You can paste between different presets and even to other apps.
• New Predefined Actions
  • Added predefined action “Volume Up (Small Step)” and “Volume Down (Small Step)”
  • Added predefined action “Toggle Dark Mode”
  • Added predefined action “Toggle Do Not Disturb On/Off”
  • Added predefined action “Toggle Night Shift (experimental, requires macOS 10.12.4)”
  • Added predefined action “Add New Space To Mission Control”
  • Added predefined action “Run Apple Script in background”
  • Added Caps Lock predefined action
  • Added a new mode for pasting/inserting custom text. You can now choose between “pasting” and “typing”, depending on the use case one might be faster than the other.
• Faster Window Snapping
  • In general Window Snapping should be much faster, especially on retina screens
  • Window snapping has now a “High Performance Mode” which can be activated in the advanced preferences. It significantly increases the performance of the window snapping animation, but also significantly increases the memory usage of BTT.
• Touch Bar
  • The Touch Bar brightness slider uses a different API and shouldn’t be dimmed back by the system anymore.
  • The Apple Script widget now allows to run Apple Scripts which only update the widget by pressing it. To achieve this, assign the “Run Apple Script (enter directly as text)” predefined action. (You can leave the script field in the widget settings empty if you don’t need timer based updates).
  • Fixed some small layout problems
• Mouse Gestures / Drawings
  • You can now set a minimum movement that is required before starting to recognize right-click drawings.
  • Drawing gestures should now only be recognized while being drawn with approximately the rotation they were recorded with (can be changed in the advanced settings).
  • Fixed various bugs with the drawings feature UI.
• Other
  • Fixed issues with corner-clicks triggering corner taps
  • Fixed issues with four finger taps
  • Fixed issues with the custom four finger tap sequences
  • Signed with a new Apple Developer certificate because my old one has expired recently.
  • More things are logged for the usage statistics (will be improved further soon)
  • Fixed issue that caused the BTT window to behave weird with Mission Control
  • Fixed various bugs
• Please report any issue you encounter via Github: http://github.com/fifafu/BetterTouchTool.

Due to a little oversight on my side, some trial versions may have expired too early today.

If you receive a message that your BetterTouchTool version has expired, there are a few ways to proceed:

1. Purchase a license 🙂 (https://boastr.net/buy) or,
2. Click the BetterTouchTool menubar item and select “Check for alpha version updates” or,
3. Download a fresh trial from this site (https://boastr.net/downloads)

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Alex Wolkov has written a very nice post about Touch Bar customization using BetterTouchTool:

https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-really-customize-your-new-touch-bar-ea42ec66f42c

A few words about the current state of the Touch Bar integration in BTT:

• It’s quite stable now and offers many customization options.
• You can specify custom Touch Bars for every app or globally
• You can change how the Touch Bar should appear for every app (e.g. if you want to show the BTT Touch Bar only for certain apps)
• You can create Touch Bar button groups
• There are three widgets, more to come. (Currently, Battery Time, Date/Time and an App Switcher widget are available)

The most current version with Touch Bar support can be downloaded here: http://bettertouchtool.net/releases/BetterTouchTool.zip

As GitHub has a pretty good issue tracking system I’m now using it for BetterTouchTool. So if you encounter any issues, got any question bug or feature request, head to https://github.com/fifafu/BetterTouchTool and create a new Issue.

I’ll integrate this in BetterTouchTool with the next release.

Download version 1.96 here: http://boastr.net/releases/btt1.96.zip

TODO List:

• Ability to show Dock and maybe Menubar in TouchBar  (can just re-use most of the relevant code from BTT Remote for this:-))
• Add (optional) static button group to the right
• Add widgets (e.g. current time/date, battery status…)
• Add additional press & hold functionality to buttons
• Add sliders and other items
• Write Documentation and collect Tips & Tricks

Already Fixed/Added:

• Icon only buttons
• Padding can be added to the buttons
• Can now use the full TouchBar space if you hide the Control Strip
• Control Strip can now easily be hidden/shown in the General TouchBar settings in BTT
  • All System Functions now continue to work fine when the Control Strip is hidden.
• Sticky Items on the left side (right side will some soon)
• Show ESC Button and BTT Button when Control Strip is hidden
• Fixed various glitches
• You can now decide per app what kind of Touch Bar you want to see, see the following screenshots.
• More updates with features and fixes will come very soon.

Please expect bugs !!!

A new BetterTouchTool alpha with support for Touch Bar customization can be downloaded here: https://boastr.net/releases/btt1.94_alpha.zip

It is very alpha, only tested on my Mac and definitely contains bugs.

My TODO-list for the TouchBar implementation is still quite long, here a small excerpt:

• Fix all of the remaining issues (please report all you can find!)
• Add icon only buttons
• Add (optional) static button groups to the left and right
• Add widgets (e.g. current time/date, battery status…)
• Add additional press & hold functionality to buttons
• Add sliders and other items
• Find out how to show the ESC key or find a good replacement solution (currently I advice to enable Caps Lock to ESC mapping in System Preferences => Keyboard => Shortcuts => Modifier Keys)
• Add a way to access the F1-F16 function keys when the Control Strip is hidden
• Write documentation and collect tips & tricks
• Experiment with sounds or maybe trigger force feedback on the trackpad when pressing a button in the TouchBar

BetterTouchTool will soon let you customize the TouchBar on the new MBP. You’ll be able to add custom actions to your favorite apps, even those that don’t support the TouchBar.

The first BetterTouchTool prototype with per-app customizable Touchbar seems to be working fine and I hope to have a public version in about a week.

BetterTouchTool is not yet fully compatible with the big new trackpad built into the 2016 Macbook Pros. I have ordered one of the new MBPs but unfortunately it won’t arrive until mid-end of December.
As soon as it’s here I’ll release an update to make BetterTouchTool fully compatible and possibly add Touchbar support in BTT.

The new Macbook Pro (at least the 13 inch version) is the first Macbook that made me hesitate quite a bit before ordering, because I really dislike it. (No more HDMI, no more SD card reader, no more optical audio out, no more mag-safe,  significantly smaller battery, not a single USB-A port, super expensive, comically big trackpad, no haptic feedback on the Touchbar, soldered SSD, mediocre GPU…). Honestly I’d much rather have liked to order a new Surface Book but well… I still have some hope in Apple.

During the last few days I fixed various little Sierra issues, especially regarding keyboard shortcuts.  Please continue reporting all remaining issues you can find (I may not respond to every email but I’m reading them all). boastr.net@gmail.com

To update to the latest alpha, use the “Check for alpha version updates” button in the BetterTouchTool menubar menu.

Here are the release notes of the last two alpha versions. I hope to have the final release for all users ready soon.

BetterTouchTool Download 1.89 Alpha (October, 3, 2016)