I’ve had BTT for years and the one item I have hoped for since I started is a better (more user friendly) UI and something that is more stable (I experience many glitches and 3-5 seconds of wait time after I click/tap on any action to check it of make a change). For every update that happens, there is yet more scrolling, moving the cursor all over the place, more and more clicks/taps in order to accomplish something, and more unexpected crashes. A few examples:
In order to now get to different floating menu actions (actions executed on trigger, scroll right, right click, etc.) one has to click/tap on the “Groups and Top Level Triggers, then click/tap on the specific item of the floating menu, then scroll to the specific action execution (which, if there are numerous actions in the actions executed on trigger section, means doing a lot of scrolling to find the right one), then making any adjustments or changes. It was set up a couple of versions ago to have those action execution gestures separated out on the top which was much easier to do than how it is now. In the list view it takes 2-3 more clicks to do the same thing as the previous versions.
Another example would be “Move mouse to position” which means opening up the “action configuration” list, selecting “other mouse actions”, selecting “move mouse to”, clicking on “record new position”, then moving the mouse to that position. Maybe I’m strange but if I’m wanting to record a position, why doesn’t that box come up automatically instead of having to do that last click/tap in order to record the specific position?
Several versions ago the “+” button was removed from the “action configuration column”. So now in order to add an action, click/tap the “+” in the lower right corner or find it at the bottom of the action sequences, move to the upper right corner, select the appropriate item, move down to that item, then move back to the middle of the screen where you started.
I completely understand that BTT does a whole lot of things and some of this is unavoidable. But a lot of the UI is set up so that you have to move and click/tap multiple times all over the place to accomplish one thing. Seems odd that a gesture app (meant to take multiple actions necessary to accomplish something and have those actions happen in sequence with just 1 gesture) would take so much work to set up itself. It’s the same as vehicles that take menus and sub menus and sub sub menus just to turn on the heater fan. It is cool and amazing but my point is that it’s multiple actions to just do 1 thing.
Do not misunderstand me - I absolutely love BTT and would be lost without it. Fantastic app and it’s amazing as to what can be done! But each version gets more and more complicated (with seemingly more glitches) and I would like to see a more friendly UI and more stability.
By the way, the screen brightness controls are backwards - the “brightness up” action actually lowers the screen brightness (and vice versa).
A 3-5s delay is absolutely not normal, there must be something very wrong with your BTT Clicking an action should be instant and should show its configuration instantly. If you want you can go to Help -> Export Diagnostic Debug Information and send the result to me (andreas@folivora.ai)
Most people didn't understand the old action categories, with the new design their adoption has sky rocketed even though it is not even released on the stable channel yet. I see your points on this, but ultimately I feel the new solution is much better than before and at least for me they definitely reduce required mouse movements. They also simplify a lot of the setup that was previously pretty complex (e.g. long / short key or mouse button clicks)
For mouse movements, recording a global position is just one way, often I just enter the values I need directly. Also I think you wouldn't want to open up the mouse recording every time you click the action to see its configuration.
The + button has not been removed from the action column. Could you post a screenshot of this happening?
In general you seem to be a lot on the current alpha or manual update versions. To avoid glitches I would generally recommend to wait for the thoroughly tested versions to be pushed via auto update.
These actions send the standard macOS brightness up/down key events, it would be very weird if they triggered incorrect behavior. Do the standard brightness key on your keyboard work?
There is one thing which has saved me half my editing time for Floating Menus: right-click a Trigger and select show in BTT.
Andreas said that this is a temporary feature added along with many other context-sensitive menu items – I strongly suggest keeping this feature somewhere. The context-sensitive menu seems to be an excellent place.
That won’t get you to the Action you want to edit, but it does save a lot of faffing about.
My Floating Menus had gotten almost unusable at some point (similar to what you describe). I performed the following voodoo:
Upgraded MacOS to the most recent version.
Upgraded Better Touch Tool to the most recent alpha. I continue to do this, as many times a day as it is refreshed, which is usually a few.
Moved all Floating Menus to top level categories.
Deleted all disabled actions.
Specified for each call to another Floating Menu its UUID. (My hunch is that this helped as much as everything else combined.)
Anything else I thought was a sensible de-crufting action.
That made Floating Menus reliably useful again. Almost every workflow I use now depends on them.
It would be good to have somewhere a page of Andreas-approved, thoughtful de-crufting, stream-lining, standard, robust-ifying steps that one should take to keep one’s BTT customizations flawless.
Thank you for the suggestions, Kirby. I am on the latest Mac OS (26.2) and on BTT 6.116 although Andreas says that may be causing a lot of glitches, hesitation times (takes 3-5 seconds after clicking/tapping on an action before it highlights or responds), numerous crashes, and a lot of bugs. I also have all of my floating menus in the group and top level column although there are a ton of deleted items in the trash. Are you referring to those when you suggest deleting all disabled actions?
I’m not sure I understand your suggestion of right clicking a trigger and selecting show in BTT. There is nothing like that when I right click on anything. And I haven’t played around with context-sensitive menu items at this point and can’t say that I know anything about those but I’ll do some poking around to find out what they are and what they do. Would I be on the right track thinking that a context sensitive menu is an action or set of actions (say, for example, 4 down arrows, a tab, then return) that might be called something specific (say, for example, “select 4th item” on a pop up menu like when clicking “edit” in the menu bar) then executed in the action sequence by a specific singular BTT action command (instead of 6 individual actions)?
Can you also tell me more about the UUID copying (which I do see when I right click)? Again, I haven’t played around with this but it sounds like you may be suggestion this as a better source for copying an action (maybe instead of manual copy and paste - ⌘C/⌘V?) that’s more reliable or stable - and quicker.
Would you be able to post a quick screen capture of your 3-5 second delays? I tried to reproduce with your debug info, but was unable to on my machine. Is there maybe some app (or even BTT itself) taking a LOT of CPU on your machine? (Like > 100%)
By the way, as you mentioned gestures etc. - many power users also just define their own gestures or shortcuts for BTT - like for any other app BTT can also be used to customize itself. So e.g. a gesture, shortcut or even floating menu for adding actions can easily be achieved
I think @Kirby is referring to floating menu context menus:
… a ton of deleted items in the trash. Are you referring to those when you suggest deleting all disabled actions?
I wasn't, but for general de-crufting I can't see it not being a good idea, but note that I skipper a rowboat near the shore – the speedboaters out in the main channel will be able to give actual advice, not voodoo .
… your suggestion of right clicking a trigger and selecting show in BTT
Andreas answered this already. For nomenclature: the menu that pops up when you right-click (⌃{click}) an object on the screen is called (since forever, afaik) the "context-sensitive menu". Like most every object, Triggers on Floating Menus have their own context-sensitive menus. Andreas posted a screenshot of one. NB: Context-sensitive menus are a system-wide feature of MacOS (and other OS's); they are not part of or restricted to BetterTouchTool.
Can you also tell me more about the UUID copying?
I use Floating Menus for pretty much everything at this point. In my implementation, I have standardized on a size (~300 x 500 px) with a standard layout of square Triggers (~100 x 100 px) that gives me 15 fixed Trigger locations for each Floating Menu. (My mind is exceedingly locative.) As such, I have many Triggers that exchange one of these Floating Menus for another Floating Menu. These Triggers contain the Action "Show Floating Menu" or the Action "Execute Actions For Existing Configured Trigger", each of which allows the user to specify the Floating Menu or Trigger referenced in the Action Title. Andreas has provided two ways in the Action configurator to specify this "target": a drop-down (or drill-down dialog) of existing Floating Menus/Triggers, or a text field for the target's UUID. When my BetterTouchTool installation was working poorly, I noticed that (somehow) the selections I'd made either referenced the wrong target or a non-existing target. That's when I replaced each with the UUID of the target. I think this helped a lot – but I have no argument for that, and don't know why it would (other than that I thought the drop-down/drill-down selection method was not robust IME).
Clicking an action should be instant and should show its configuration instantly. If you want you can go to Help -> Export Diagnostic Debug Information and send the result to me (
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