Second Hyper Key?

Configuration Help & General Discussion
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1

I am trying to have a second key act as a hyper key. I have a bunch of window moving shortcuts all with the Caps Lock + Arrow shortcut. I want to be able to use just my right hand as well, so I figured I'd have backslash () act as a hyper key if I held it for more than a second.

However, I cannot figure out how to get it to trigger hyper key. The hyper key action is gone once I've used it with Caps Lock, and sending it as a shortcut is impossible because BTT doesn't let you record just modifiers. I tried sending "Caps Lock" as a shortcut to BTT, but that didn't work, either.

Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

2

Can't you just use the right Command key + letter?

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3

No, given that the current shortcuts all use Opt+Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+Arrow for the shortcut, I'd have to recreate them all. I just want the "" to act as a hyper so I don't have to recreate the shortcuts all over again.

4

I see. Then right command could also press the other modifiers at the same time, there are actions for this ... but from my experience this does not always work well. If you want, just try it.

5

This currently can't be done from within BTT (although there is not much missing, so maybe I can make it possibe in the future). You could remap your key to be a second capslock but unfortunately apple made remapping without external tools a bit more complicated with macOS 14.3 (it's still possible sonoma - hidutil stopped working on macOS 14.2 update - Ask Different )

6

Ah well, there is a way to make it work with modifier keys, but it's quite hacky. Still describing it in case you want to try:

1.) Enable this option, restart BTT:

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2.) Go to the key sequences section in BTT
3.) Record a key sequence of e.g. "right shift down" (click the stop recording button while shift is pressed)
4.) Record a key sequence for "right shift up" (start the recording after pressing shift down, then stop it again after releasing the key)
5.) Assign the modifier down & modifier up actions:

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Here an example preset for right shift. Make sure the option in step 1 is enabled and BTT has restarted.
right_shift_example.bttpreset (5.8 KB)

7

That's more or less what I meant. But do you need the shift action? Isn't the "physical press" enough?

8

better add it, so all modifier events have the same "origin". Might work without, but could lead to weird issues.

Unfortunately this only works with key sequences right now, but I'll have a look at fixing it for keyboard shortcuts as well.

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9

Mm, what happens if I want to write a capital A, right shift a?

10

with that approach the right shift key becomes a hyper key and can not be used as a standard shift key anymore. (you can of course do the same with e.g. right cmd or right opt)

11

Which is much better. :slight_smile:

Or you can set the key sequence so that there must be a (long) pause before the "hyper key" function. Then you could use right shift during normal writing.

12

Hey, so the key sequence thing actually worked! @Frank1 what I actually did was
key it to the backslash, but then just added an advanced condition of the seconds_since_last_trigger to be less than 0.3 and the last trigger action to be the same UUID, so now I just double tap backslash and I've got a hyper key. @Andreas_Hegenberg thank you for the help. One interesting little conundrum: I've noticed that the "hold modifiers to drag window" setting always works when holding down Shift+Ctrl+Opt+Cmd, but when I use the Hyper Key, it works and then doesn't work again for quite a while. Any idea why that's happening? It doesn't work at all with the key sequence, but I'm ok with that.

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