Shortcuts App Bug: Bluetooth Action Errantly Opening BTT UI

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
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1

Describe the bug

When running BetterTouchTool's "Manage Bluetooth State & Connected Devices" action in macOS's Shortcuts app, the action is opening BTT's main user interface window (i.e., instead of just running the action in the background). This problem is new to the last week or two, though I'm not entirely sure which BTT update that it initially stared occurring on.

Luckily, the action is still connecting to the appropriate bluetooth device. As a result, the bug isn't really that big of a deal. It just means the user has to close BTT's UI after the shortcut runs.

Affected input device (e.g. MacBook Trackpad, Magic Mouse/Trackpad, Touch Bar, etc.):

Shortcuts App on macOS

Device information:

  • Type of Mac: MacBook Pro, Apple M3 Pro
  • macOS version: 26.5
  • BetterTouchTool version: 6.521

Additional information (e.g. crash logs, related issues, etc.):

While my report above is specific to the "Manage Bluetooth State & Connected Devices" action, when troubleshooting I noticed that several other BTT actions in the Shortcuts app were also causing BTT's user interface to open. As a result, the bug is probably a little more widespread.

2

I am on version BetterTouchTool 6.521 and have shortcuts that use the "Send shortcut cmd" and "Custom move resize" actions and I also get the Configuration window opening when using these shortcuts, only in the past few days. This is the latest version I am on but I manually updated once or twice since this started and it is still happening.

Device information:

  • Type of Mac: MacBook Pro, Apple M1 Pro

  • macOS version: 26.5

  • BetterTouchTool version: 6.521

3

This has been happening to me since the 26.5 update too. It's not specific to BTT, it seems to happen with all 3rd party apps.
Apple is aware of the problem and looking into it (I called Apple support).

It's somehow possible to fix it on the developer's side though. BetterDisplay fixed the problem in a recent update:

  • macOS Shortcuts seems to relaunch the app in macOS 26.5, causing the Settings window to appear momentarily - #5390 v4.3.1

For BTT in particular, it's possible to replace the shortcuts with AppleScripts (right click the action you want to trigger and "Copy Apple Script to Activate the Trigger").
Then change your shortcut to run an AppleScript instead of the BTT shortcut, this doesn't open the BTT window.

But it's not as seamless, AppleScripts seem to have some kind of delay before running.

4

Thanks for the info, that helps a lot. I'll need to check whether it is possible to apply a similar workaround to BTT until Apple fixes the issue.

5

I think for now you can resolve the issue using this terminal command while BTT is quit:

defaults write com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool BTTDontShowPrefsOnReopen YES

6

It works, nice easy fix, thanks!