Customisation help

Hi,

I am a bit of a newbie at coding and I was wondering if someone could tell me what I should be reading/learning to be able to customise the touchbar to my needs, please? (I am using the AquaTouch preset)

For example: if I want to be able to show all of my events for today (if any) from the fantastical app and be able to add an event directly by adding a + button. Or if I want to start a timer from the top menu bar how do I say hey I want to open the menu bar, (show options to start timer (with clock going down)/stop or see what options to tag it).

Basically, what do I need to know to be able to do that? I would really appreciate any directions please!

p.s I also understand that perhaps this is a little much to ask so I am willing to commission someone if they were willing to walk me through it as well. I believe the value I can get from it could greatly improve my workflow.

Hey. I don't have the time to give you a very comprehensive answer, but let me try to direct you in a good direction :slight_smile:

I think it would make sense to get used to the functionality of BTT first, in case you have not done so yet. For example, as a first step, think of a keyboard shortcut you use regularly (global or in a specific app) and then create a simple Touch Bar button and apply an action to it that triggers this shortcut. Then also learn about the funtionality of BTT that is a little more complicated, like for example the other predefined actions and all the settings you can change for buttons/widgets. A good place to get some help with all this is of course the BTT documentation: https://docs.folivora.ai/

When you are familiar with creating and customizing buttons/widgets in BTT and placing them on the Touch Bar, you can already do many things, but of course you are limited. So the next step I would say would be to learn AppleScript. It is a scripting language made specifically for automating tasks in macos and it works together well with BTT. It is a relatively easy programming language, but it is stil a programming language. So if you are new to coding, it will take some time to learn. When you know some AppleScript basics, you can use the "AppleScript / JavaScript Widgets" to perform tasks like the ones you mentioned in your post (I'm not sure if you will be able to do exactly these tasks though. Not everything is possible with AppleScript either). You can always search this forum if you want to create scripts for specific apps or tasks. Maybe someone else already posted a preset for a simililar task and you can "borrow" :wink: some of their code!

I hope this helped you a little bit. Have fun!

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Heyy @fidgetspinner

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond! This is a really good answer! I'll definitely do that!