GoldenChaos-BTT Support and Feedback Thread

[drichard]

new user so be easy on me ....the "paused" tab any way to bring that tab to the forefront? for example you're listening/ "watching" a video on youtube and you have 100 tabs open in chrome because you hate battery life.... you use btb to pause ....surf the web add more tabs ....now you want to actually watch the video you pause ....if I hit the "pause" tab in btb I would like to switch back to the youtube tab and continue watching said video

also I would like a narrow middle snap option ...so I can have 3 windows open please.

[Future_Face]

Hi @drichard
I don't know what you mean for the first paragraph. Can you be a bit clearer so I can help? otherwise @GoldenChaos might be able to help.

As for the snap option, I use this: Simple Window Manager - SWM
To activate it while still using your main touchbar preset:

• Import it to BTT
• Open your main preset that you use (eg. GoldenChaos).
• Tick Simple Window Manager and ensure that your main preset is still ticked.

Now, if you right-click the 'minimise' button on a tab, you will see the options come up.

[drichard]

thank you for the window manager tip ....I just wanted to add the middle thirds option to golden chaos so I'll poke around and see what I can do

now as far the first part ...as you can see in the picture

I have started a video on youtube then moved away from that youtube window...I would like to be able to click on now playing tab and have chrome switch back to the youtube tab

like you can do when you enable browser mode like you can see here....if I click on mac rumors I'm taken to that tab

[drichard]

also I might have found a bug....I have a lot of recurring events in my calendar if I wanted to open the calendar and make a change i would click on the calendar tab in btt....but it opens the calendar on the very first day I created the event not the event on said current day....example you create an event on june 1st that repeats on the 1st of every month ....its november now and you need to delete the event that happens on the 1st ....you click on btt and it opens the calender on june 1st when the even was originally created

you dont need to make any changes on this day .....its months ago ....any help with fixing this?

[Future_Face]

OK.

this might be out of my expertise... I suspect some coding is needed for your tab problem.
The only thing I can think of is if you pin the tab of Youtube (drag the tab to the left until it goes small. Then, count how far in it is (ie, if you have pinned: Drive, Gmail, Google Classroom, Youtube, then YouTube is the fourth one in).
Then, make a trigger under your chrome button. Make it a shortcut, and do Command + [However for in your Youtube tab is ie. 4 - Command + 4).

Sorry if this explanation is bad...im really tired haha.
If you have any more problems with this, or if you don't want to use this idea, then you will probably need @GoldenChaos himself.

[Future_Face]

On second thought, reading back, I dunno if this will even work😓
worth trying tho.

[GoldenChaos]

The quarantine has officially destroyed my sense of time. I felt like it was only mid-May, but tomorrow is June. Good lord. Let’s do this.

@crNh There is no way to add text suggestions to GC, although I wish it were possible. If it ever becomes possible I will definitely add such a feature.

@Zak_Bartlett I probably won’t be adding a minimal esc key style, but I am definitely making a tutorial to show people how to copy any widget they like into GC.

@Ceeel Do not edit dock badges using the BTT config window! Use the GC-BTT Preferences window. You can use the keyboard shortcut cmd opt shift p to open the GC-BTT Preferences window. There you’ll be able to properly enable/disable dock badges.

@odrjosh The now playing widget uses macOS’s built-in now playing functionality. In the past GC had its own custom music widget, but this was a huge battery hog and not really worth it. Unfortunately, the macOS system now playing only shows the latest playing media if multiple are playing at once. There isn’t a way to reconfigure this that I know of, but I wonder if there’s some sort of helper app that can pause music when it detects a video being played? I’d use that, haha.

@Aresrodin Going through in order

• I am working on a setting for having the media controls always show
• That was implemented way back then! Simply long-press on the skip-forward or skip-backward buttons for skip forward 30s and skip backward 15s respectively.
• There is no progress bar for media unfortunately. I’ve been slowly looking into ways to achieve this, but it’ll probably be a while.

@Ayman I’m not sure what you mean by “original volume bar and brightness options”, could you elaborate? (The answer is probably to use the “Default Settings” button on the main tab of the GC settings window.) As for customizing the control menu, there aren’t user settings for that (yet) so I recommend checking/unchecking the things you want to appear there in the BTT configuration window. There is a group on the left sidebar for the control menu that houses all the control menu’s widgets!

@Future_Face Spotify’s AppleScript support is pretty limited. This is one of those controls I tried to write before, but there just isn’t support in Spotify’s app for it sadly.

@hariprasadsh What @Future_Face said might work! However, if it doesn’t, first remove and reinstall GC and see if that fixes things. If that does not fix things, open the GC Settings Window and click Default Settings and GC will reset itself to factory fresh. You know it’s successful when that Applying Settings message goes away on its own! It can take around 10-15 seconds for things to apply, so please be patient.

@drichard If you use safari you can do this with the native now playing controls chrome doesn’t support them, meaning it doesn’t support now playing in GC or even hardware keyboard media controls. Will also consider a center third window snap option!

As for the calendar issue, this sounds like a BTT issue. @Andreas_Hegenberg pinging you to check out this calendar widget issue!

[Future_Face]

Ok, thanks very much @GoldenChaos
Just thought you'd want to have a look at this?

Highlights of my current Touch Bar present

I am a bit confused as well and I think I was not born to write manuals. I can and will help you for sure especially since we gone this long way and many things are already working. The only thing I can't help you with is the problem with pip/ spotipy, sorry for confusing you... and I think you have to use google for solving this. If spotipy is installed we can go further and get things working. For your motivation:

He has a button that adds the currently playing songs to a desired playlist.
thanks.

[Aadi_Anand]

@GoldenChaos It's been along time since I've logged into this community! Anyway, just wanted to let u know that I really love your preset. I just wanted to check if its possbile to create a google docs script, that would make the touchbar change when I click a "google doc icon" so that I would have buttons relevant to google docs. Please let me know if this is possible thanks!

[Khaledm87]

thank you for the amazing work!

few questions:

• I use in a daily basis 3 languages. the Language Switcher apparently is not working for me. it's just showing a blue Globe icon, pressing it just shows same icon along the bar. how I'm supposed to fix it?

• I like the dictionary suggestions the classic touch bar gives me whenever I type. anyway to keep getting that whenever I type?

• I understand there's no support for contextual App-specific touch bar interfaces? any option at least to switch back easily/conveniently while working?

• you might add an option to display the time at all (Never). for me it's just place-holder that it's useless on the touch bar as long as it's showing on the screen bar.

Thanks!!
Khaled

[Harry55494]

Thanks for making the touchbar great again!
I've got a few smalls features that I wanna suggest

• Adding the option to start the screensaver from the control strip

• Having a fade animation when switching between different strips, like the default touchbar when switching between apps

• The option to be able to add a delay when using the command button for the command strip, when I use keyboard shortcuts, seeing the flash of the apps can be distracting!

• Being able to adjust volume/brightness by complete bars would be nice, means you can change a lot more without having to make two swipes

• I also have a small bug where the date/time can sometimes overlap, and the last numbers are partially cut off (wasn't able to screenshot this for some reason)

Thankyou again!

[Future_Face]

Hey @Harry55494
You can do some of these things yourself!

@Harry55494

Having a fade animation when switching between different strips, like the default touchbar when switching between apps

To do this, go into BTT settings (NOT GC settings)
In 'touchbar', click 'advanced' and tick 'Animate Group Open and Close'.

@Harry55494

The option to be able to add a delay when using the command button for the command strip, when I use keyboard shortcuts, seeing the flash of the apps can be distracting!

You should be able to do that with apple script, which I am not at all good at (@GoldenChaos should be able to help with that).

@Harry55494

Being able to adjust volume/brightness by complete bars would be nice, means you can change a lot more without having to make two swipes

I don't quite understand what you mean by this. can you elaborate please?

[Harry55494]

@Future_Face
Thank you for the help!
What I mean for the volume/brightness sliders is that when you use two fingers on the touch bar, it acts more as a continuous slider, as opposed to a Touch Bar preset like Aqua, that moves an entire bar of volume at a time. With better touch tool, its possible to stop sliding partway through a bar, or reach the end of the touch bar without getting to max volume, and I wanted a way to change it by bar, rather by 2% or 5% or whatever the current default is.

[Rijk]

Just installed and loving this app. Will definitely buy and contribute.

Just one question: when I press the left Cmd button, the Dock appears. I like this functionality, but I use that button a lot for keyboard shortcuts (like Cmd + Tab, Cmd + C, Cmd + Space, etc). I also use Option, for instance to move the cursor word by word. When I do that, the touchbar of course shifts as well, which is a little distracting from the corner of my eye.

A solution could be to only enable this for the right Cmd and Option keys, and not for the left ones (I only use the left ones for shortcuts). Would it be possible to add this as an option? That would make this app like 100% perfect

[Future_Face]

okay, I don't think I can help with this sorry

[GoldenChaos]

@Future_Face oh, awesome I will have a look and add it to my checklist of upcoming features to implement!

@Aadi_Anand this is absolutely possible and I’ve added it to my list of menu bar groups to create are there any particular controls you’d like to see or a reference for a set of controls you really like?

@Khaledm87

• Language switcher is sadly half-broken in Catalina due to Apple removing scripting support for the language menu. I’ve left the GC widget in due to popular demand because it is still useful to show the currently selected language (for most languages). I’m probably going to strip this widget down to just the flag icon in the next version unless a magical workaround suddenly appears.
• Sadly no, I wish!
• GC has the built-in keyboard shortcut cmd+opt+shift+0 to quick toggle between the native Touch Bar UI and GC! BTT also supports app-specific activation, so I’ve been slowly adding more contextual app support. What apps would you like to see support for?
• Great idea, will implement

@Harry55494

• Very yes - this will come in a big update that will let you customize the control strip!
• I’ve been asking for this fade animation since forever lol. @Andreas_Hegenberg could we pleeeeeease have a fade option? The slide animation is, to be bluntly honest, not good
• Will look into adding a delay. I really, really like this idea and think it will fix my biggest annoyance with the cmd menu.
• I’ can definitely add an option to change the swipe action step size!
• This is a reported bug that I’ve actually messaged @Andreas_Hegenberg directly about. I never heard back about a fix. For Andreas - is there some reason why this padding issue cannot be addressed?

@Rijk I’m going to implement a slight delay for the cmd menu specifically so that it doesn’t flash during keyboard shortcuts! Keep an eye out for the next version

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

Unfortunately a fade animation does not work with with the technique BTT has to use to display its content ;-( I think I can not add any other animations.

For the padding issue: I'd need some way to reproduce this, I haven't seen overlaps here, does it happen with any specific widget? (sorry I don't remember whether we already talked about this.. last months were quite stressful :-))

[GoldenChaos]

No worries, I’m in the same boat, haha. Kudos to you for shipping so many updates during this stressful time!

The padding issue happens with the date/time widget. The issue is that, by default, the date/time widget has too much padding. To lessen the padding, I had to apply a negative padding to the widget. However, as the time changes throughout the day, this can cause the text of the date/time widget to become clipped. The issue is that the widget doesn’t seem to be resizing itself as time changes.

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

Ah that makes sense. There is indeed no frame update code in the date widget, I'll add that now

[GoldenChaos]

Hooray

To bring another display issue to your attention: Certain icons are still not rendering at all if they come into view after the initial Touch Bar load. The best example of this is the ColorSnapper menu bar widget. To reproduce: Enable the ColorSnapper menu bar widget. Restart GC with ColorSnapper closed. Open ColorSnapper. The widget’s space on the menu bar will appear but will be blank. Restarting BTT with ColorSnapper open fixes the issue.

However, unlike the other disappearing icon issues, this one has no clear cause. I’ve already added icons to both the regular and alternate slots of this widget. So this must be a deeper BTT bug!