Dropped keystrokes and severe execution latency in macro action sequences

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
1

Describe the bug

Regression Notice: These exact triggers and action sequences operated without issue for over 18 months. The dropped inputs and execution delays began only after updating to recent BTT builds.

There is severe input dropping and execution latency in BetterTouchTool sequential macro workflows. Keyboard actions inside action chains are frequently missed or dropped entirely unless artificial delays (e.g., 0.60s) or duplicated identical action steps are added between items.

Specifically observed behaviors:

  1. Dropped Keystrokes in Macro Chains: Keystrokes fail to execute following clipboard/paste operations unless significant delays are inserted. For example, a Right Arrow action placed after Shift+Cmd+V fails to execute unless preceded by an (Async) Delay next action by 0.60 Seconds.

  2. Failed/Skipped Shortcut Execution: Keyboard shortcuts fail to fire on the initial trigger. Executing Shift+Cmd+Down once fails to perform the selection; duplicating the exact Shift+Cmd+Down action twice with 0.38s async delays between them is required for reliable execution.

Affected input device

Keyboard Shortcuts / Named Triggers / Action Sequences

Screenshots

image
image554Ɨ870 45.5 KB

image
image474Ɨ768 35.7 KB

Device information

  • Type of Mac: MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021), Apple M1 Pro, 32 GB RAM

  • macOS version: macOS Tahoe 26.7

  • BetterTouchTool version: 6.870 (build 2026092901)

Additional information

  • Workflows were stable for 18+ months prior to recent updates.

  • System has been restarted to confirm it is not a temporary macOS background process issue.

  • Issue is persistent on build 2026092901.

  • No crash logs generated (the issue pertains to keystroke execution delays and dropped inputs rather than an application crash).

2

Is any process (or the BTT process) on your system using a lot of CPU (> 90%)? I can't reproduce the issue and don't think there has been any change that could influence this, however macOS can drop events if the system is under too heavy load.

What kind of trigger are you using to run the action sequence?

3

Hi

Since BTT is sluggish, it occurred to me to check activity monitor:

image
image625Ɨ131 13.7 KB

Safe to say that 2.86 GB is abnormal immediately after startup?

BTW, I installed 6.878 this morning.

Thx, Doug

4

Unfortunately memory usage doesn't mean much as it completely depends on config (and available free memory), you can get to that with just one or two webviews configured in BTT that load a large website.

If you want you can go to "Help => Export Basic Debug Logs To Desktop" and send the result to me (andreas@folivora.ai) or alternatively send the full diagnostic debug info (Export Diagnostic Debug Information To Desktop)

image
image1072Ɨ786 143 KB

5

Pleased to report I don't have empirical evidence of this being a BTT-sourced latency problem.

I found an anomaly in my enterprise-scale Google Sheets workbook that causes me to state the above.

Sheets would lose its mind when I was using a saved view that crossed a thousand-row difference between rows. When I would try to āŒ˜-:up_arrow:-ā†“ it would add severe latency, causing BTT macros to exceed all timing instructions. This happened intermittently. Other saved views with similar boundary spans would work as expected.

If I deleted the row(s) that was involved in the latency, operations would resume properly.

Fun.