TL;dr: The following 30 example function calls, out of a total of 37 listed in the documentation all return “SyntaxError: Unexpected keyword ‘function’” because they all misspell “async” as “asnyc”: trigger_named, trigger_named_async_without_response, cancel_delayed_named_trigger_execution, update_touch_bar_widget, update_menubar_item, update_stream_deck_widget, trigger_action, execute_assigned_actions_for_trigger, refresh_widget, update_trigger, get_trigger, get_triggers, add_new_trigger, delete_trigger, get_clipboard_content, get_selection, set_persistent_string_variable, set_string_variable, set_persistent_number_variable, set_number_variable, get_number_variable, get_string_variable, export_preset, import_preset, display_notification, set_clipboard_content, set_clipboard_contents, set_keychain_item, get_keychain_item, get-selected-text
I downloaded BTT about 6 months ago, and what a roller coaster it has been. I immediately recognized the value of it and committed myself to reading the documentation and learning how to maximize the value I got from this software. Unfortunately, my experience with the Javascript led me to a pretty dark place, and now having finally determined the problem, I feel compelled to share here in the hopes I can prevent someone else from falling into the same trap.
Some background, I’m in my 40s, and I’ve been using computers daily for a quarter century. I consider myself a power user, but not an expert or professional. I came to BTT with extensive experience in Shortcuts and some experience in AppleScript, but absolutely no experience with JavaScript. But I was willing to learn, so I studied the documentation and tried to test my understanding with many of the function calls above. For my own dignity I won’t say how much time I spent, but it was enough that I started to question my sanity and my fitness to even operate a computer. I convinced myself I could not ask for help here, because I would be ridiculed and shamed into wasting everyone’s time because I didn’t have a specific question or problem. My problem was that despite an enormous commitment to learn JavaScript by reading the documentation repeatedly, as well as this forum, and agonizingly tweaking my scripts again and again, ultimately questioning everything I knew about computers and convincing myself I was just too stupid to get it, I gave up and settled for UI scripted workarounds that were more complicated and less robust. Until finally I encountered a workflow that had no workaround. I needed to use JavaScript - specifically the trigger_action command - and after two full days of trying, I still had never successfully gotten a Javascript action to work. Never. On the verge of tears and finally prepared to give up, still unwilling to admit here I needed help because I was too stupid to use this software, I reached out to ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking, a paid model, referencing the documentation, sharing screenshots, and explaining that I needed help because I was so inept, I couldn't even get the examples to work. Even copy and pasting directly from the documentation led to failure every single time.
Not having had any exposure to Javascript outside this documentation, I failed to detect the problem, a simple transposition error repeated over and over in the documentation (consistently spelled, but consistently wrong), but the bot had no such impairment. It saw the issue immediately.
I feel well and truly gaslighted, but I know it wasn’t intentional. It occurs in every example where the function is called somefunctionname. I assume the typo made it onto the clipboard and propagated that way. Please fix this. You have no idea how much grief this caused.
