BTT Mobile Testflight Beta

Keep in mind: This is a very first beta. App Store release is planned for End of June.

You can join the Testflight beta by opening https://testflight.apple.com/join/hxd3yZXk on your iOS device. There will be at least weekly beta updates until the App Store release.

:bangbang: Before using the app have a quick look at the Getting Started section in this post.

You will always require the latest BetterTouchTool alpha, which is 5.292 at the time of posting this
https://folivora.ai/releases/

BTT Mobile is a very basic app, its purpose is to render interactive Floating Menus on your iPhone, iPad or Vision Pro (soon). These menus are defined in BetterTouchTool on your Mac. This allows you to create completely custom dashboards that you can use to control your Mac.

Now that all the basics are set up (connection, rendering etc.) the fun phase of development begins. Feel free to post any feature request you might have - now is the best time to get features added


Features Available:

  • Connect to a Mac running BetterTouchTool
  • Render custom Floating Menus on iOS devices
  • App specific menus or menus that change depending on the app
  • Access the Mac's menu bar from the iOS device
  • A basic trackpad

Features Not Yet Available In The Beta

These will become available in the next few weeks. There will be at least one BTT Mobile beta release per week.

  • Typing text from the iOS device to the Mac
  • Logic to auto select app specific menus
  • Simple JSON Format to define Floating Menus (Simple JSON Format · GitBook)
  • Integration with Apple Shortcuts app
  • Multi device support has not been tested very much so far but will definitely be supported. (e.g. an iPad and an iPhone simultaneously)
  • More Widget types (Sliders, Knobs, ...). These are now pretty simple to add, any ideas for further widgets are very welcome!
  • File browsing
  • Vision Pro Support (I'll enable this very soon)
  • Trackpad is missing various features at the moment.
  • Webview scripting: Full support for BTT's scripting functions will be added to the webview later this week. Currently not all functions are available.

Important Things To Test

Connectivity

  • BTT Mobile uses Apple's Multi Peer Connectivity Framework. This allows for some very cool things like being able to connect even if the iOS device and the Mac are in different Wifi or if the Mac is not connected to a wifi at all. However it was a bit tricky to get a stable secure connection running with this. In my tests it is now working fine, but this is something that needs further testing. I might add a fallback to standard connection in case the Multi Peer framework causes too many issues.

Menu Behavior

Do the Floating Menus behave as expected?


Getting Started

Join Testflight Beta

You can join the Testflight beta by opening Join the BTT Mobile beta - TestFlight - Apple on your iOS device

Enable BTT Mobile

Note: You will always require the latest BetterTouchTool alpha, which was 5.292 at the time of posting this
https://folivora.ai/releases/

When enabling BTT Mobile, BetterTouchTool will automatically enable an example preset called "btt-mobile-example". It contains a basic example menu which is defined globally for all apps and comes with some Safari specific additions.

There are various new BTT Mobile related predefined actions available:


Bug Collection / Known Bugs In Current Build

  • If multiple script items are used, sometimes the wrong one is updated.
7 Likes

I'm on an 11 hour long flight to Munich with some onboard Wifi – I hope I can install it and have fun testing!

1 Like

Hehe let's see I need to get a few things ready (also for the 15.4 release this week...), might still take a few hours :-/

Hope you have a nice stay here in Munich.... it's raining today :wink:

It would be an interesting test to see whether the direct networking stuff is working. BTT Mobile should be able to connect to your Mac even if your iPhone is in a different Wifi or if the wifi is blocking this. (Via AWDL)

3 Likes

You have no idea how much I've been looking forward to this. I'm gonna refreshing this thread every few minutes lol

2 Likes

I've gotten tired of the California sun so some German rain would be nice :wink:

@Andreas_Hegenberg let me know if there's anything specific you want me to test while I'm flying – we're over Canada and soon Greenland.

Don't, it's really just a first beta :wink: I'm pretty sure it will become great in the next few weeks, but the first beta is always rough :see_no_evil: I'll create a list of things to test and an outlook on the things that'll be unlocked in the next few versions.

1 Like

I create software for a living so I understand the development phases – we're here to support you @Andreas_Hegenberg

1 Like

Andreas,
what a nice nice piece of work!

My floating menu's (for Ableton Live) are quite large (you might remember...), and they are loading/navigating quite fast in my iPad (first time load takes a little bit but that is fine).

After changing the navigation to use the new "open/close sub menu for the connected IOS device" I am done and can use them... no issues so far !!!

3 Likes

Hi there,

I am using the "Update Floating menu-ITEM" action to update a play / stop button, but somehow that is not working anymore (with BTT Mobile)

Should that be already be possible or is that not yet implemented ?

Thx, a lot,
Christian

it should already work, but it’s possible that it currently only works with the item UUID - I‘ll have a look!

Just throwing this out there, if you want a different icon that communicates that it's mobile I'd be happy to do it for free.

if you can think of something, I‘d also be happy to pay for it :wink:

Awesome. I'll work with that name for now but if it changes let me know. Also, I'd do it for free., man. You are the most responsive dev I've ever seen and we all know you're a busy guy

2 Likes

Pro tip for sharing feedback

Take a screenshot on your iPhone, tap "Done", then tap "Share Beta Feedback...".

You'll then see a form where you can describe the bug or unexpected behavior as well as the steps to reproduce.

See docs here:

@Andreas_Hegenberg would this feedback workflow work for you or do you prefer to consolidate feedback in the BTT Community? Or both?

@Andreas_Hegenberg This Guy!! You're a beast dude!

both are good, the testflight feedback can be quite useful e.g. for crashlogs. However the public discussion for improvements is also very valuable. E.g. to gather opinions and ideas from multiple users.

2 Likes

@Andreas_Hegenberg Two questions:

  1. Do BTT crash logs contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or sensitive information? i.e. should they not be shared in the BTT community?

  2. Would you prefer to obtain BTT crash logs directly as part of a post here embedded in a markdown code block or would you prefer to have them sent to you via email?