BTT FAQ

  • Why is this thing so buggy?
    Answer: BetterTouchTool is just a fun project. I’m student and I have not that much programming experience. But I’ll try to make BTT a great tool.
  • Ctrl/Opt(Alt)/Cmd/ + middleclick doesn’t work, what can I do?
    Answer    : You have to add the gesture, select middleclick as predefined action AND select the appropriate  modifier key in BTT.
  • How can I control FrontRow with this?
    Answer    : You have to add /System/Library/CoreServices/FrontRow.app instead of the one in your application folder
  • I deleted Finder from the list, can I add it back?
    Answer    : Yes it’s located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app
  • Five Finger Swipes are not working, what can I do?
    Answer: Disable the original apple 4 finger swipes in your System Preferences
  • If I use the action “Hide all Windows” the BTT Icon appears in dock, what can I do?
    Answer: unfortunately that is expected behavior and needs to happen in order to hide all windows.
  • 4 Finger swipes often trigger 3 finger taps/swipes, what can I do?
    Answer: Do you have the original apple 4 finger swipes activated in your System Preferences? If so you should disable them and set custom 4 finger swipes with BTT. I can’t do false positive recognition if you use the original 4 finger swipes.
  • Four Finger Swipes on Touchpad behave strange, whats this?
    Answer:     Have you deactivated the apple standard four finger swipes in your System Preferences? If not do so. (but leave 3 finger swipes activated)
  • Will there be a Leopard compatible version of BetterTouchTool?
    Answer:     unfortunately no. I have to use some stuff that was introduced with Snow Leopard additionally I don’t want to install Leopard for testing ;-)
  • Is my non multitouch macbook touchpad supported?
    Answer: No!     The option for setting the macbook type is just needed in case you wanna use a magic mouse
  • Why are the zoom in / out actions gone?
    Answer:     They didn’t work on every system. Just set the shortcuts manually (cmd + and – usually)
  • My Pinch In / Out does not work on the magic mouse, what can I do?
    Answer: go to the BTT Preferences (Tab mouse) and play a bit with the zooming settings. Try deactivating the false positive improvements etc.
  • Oh noes, I checked the option for hiding the menubar Icon and now the menubar icon is not visible anymore! How can I access the preferences now?
    Answer    : hit CTRL+ALT+CMD+O
  • My 2 finger swipes on the magic mouse or my 3 finger swipes on the touchpad do not work. What can I do?
    Answer: You have to activate those swipes in your System Preferences in order to customize them via BTT.
  • Why do some gestures work with all modifier keys (fn/ctrl/alt/cmd) and some don’t?
    This is because of the way BetterTouchTool creates some of the actions. E.g. if you set cmd+swipe up to the action “brightness up” BTT sends the brightness up keyboard command to the system. But at the same time you are holding cmd. Instead of increasing the brightness a System Preferences window will open. Try hitting cmd+brightness up on your keyboard. The same thing will happen. Got it?
    Some other actions like expose are not triggered via a keyboard command so they are not affected by the modifier keys currently pressed.
  • Help, my gestures are not working! What can I do?
    Answer: First try the reset button in the BetterTouchTool Preferences. If this doesn’t help post a comment in one of the current Blogposts or write an email to bettertouchtool [at] boastr.net
  • Is it possible to add a real middleclick? I’m using CAD software and need it!
    Answer: you may try activating the real middleclick in the BetterTouchTool Mouse preferences in the tab “Clicks”
  • Is it possible to deactivate one finger scrolling for magic mouse?
    YES, but only globally atm. You can do that in the BTT Mouse Preferences in the general tab.
  • How do I set shortcuts if they are already used by other programs (like cmd+shift+4 for Screenshot)?
    Answer: You have to disable the global shortcuts first. Go to your System Preferences, there select Keyboard and switch to the tab Keyboard shortcut. After you have set the wanted shortcut in BTT you can activate it again in your System Preferences.
  • Is it possible to enable tap2click with BetterTouchTool?
    Answer: Yes.     Just add the gestures “Single finger tap left” and “Single finger tap right” and assign predefined actions leftclick and rightclick.
  • If I have set swipe down for expose, will a swipe up dismiss expose again?
    Answer: YES BUT     only if you have set a custom predefined action for swipe up too. The same for left/right swipes.
  • I found a bug! Where can I report it?
    Answer: just post it in the comments of a current blogpost or write an email to bettertouchtool [at] boastr.net

One Ping to “BTT FAQ”

  1. Didn’t have time » SecondBar & BetterTouchTool Blog Says:
    December 19th, 2009 at 3:27 am

    [...] BTT FAQ [...]


20 Responses to “BTT FAQ”

  1. 1. scott Says:
    December 6th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    I’ve seen another tool out there that I liked: http://en.onsoftware.com/the-best-magic-mouse-software/ . Could you implement some of their functionality in their tool. And can you open source your code?

  2. 2. Josef Says:
    December 7th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    That tool is so great! The first thing i installed when i received my magic mouse!
    Your application is what makes the mouse great!
    Thanks a million!

  3. 3. Dave Marsh Says:
    December 7th, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    I’ve just upgraded to .412, but Pinch In/Out still doesn’t appear to work for zoom in/out functions (assigning manual key assignments for cmd-opt-plus/minus)

  4. 4. Mike Fenty Says:
    December 7th, 2009 at 11:23 pm

    Hi, this tool that you have created is amazing!! However, when you update the software, I lose all of my customizations. Is there a way to save my settings? Could you possibly add this in a later version so that we don’t lose our previous settings? That would be great!

    Thanks for the software once again!!!

  5. 5. Bjoe Says:
    December 8th, 2009 at 8:45 am

    Thirst of all a big thanks for your untiring efforts to give much more sense to the magic mouse. I have tried several Magic Mouse drivers but this one is def. the best out there.
    But after all testings with swipes, clicks and gestures, it is pretty obvious why Apple has not implemented more features in there drivers :-)

  6. 6. virgilio Says:
    December 8th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    I have 0.414 and now nono of the gestures works for me :( this is wired

  7. 7. Mario Says:
    December 8th, 2009 at 7:31 pm

    Great tool – thanks a lot!

    One small thing I’d like to notice: It would be cool if the config window could be closed via cmd-w – always happens to me that I try that..
    Otherwise the middle click is somewhat difficult to hit, but maybe this improves with the next updates.
    cheers

  8. 8. ad Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    Excellent tool – it works smoothly.

    just one thing i’d like to do with magic mouse and the touch pad: chain 2 commands: “3 finger swipe down” to get “spaces” than “three finger click” to get “expose” so I can see every space and window. I can get “spaces” to work but the “three finger click” always get me back to the original space. Am I missing something in the settings?

    thanks a lot

  9. 9. Andreas Hegenberg Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    @ad
    nope thats not possible yet but I’m working on that too

  10. 10. thefoote Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Absolutely awesome tool. Has completely changed the way I use my MBP. Absolutely love it and keep up the awesome work man!

  11. 11. Robert Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    I just downloaded BTT – was mostly interested in using it to middle-click paste from clipboard in iTerm. This doesn’t seem to work, but perhaps I don’t have the configuration set correctly. as anyone gotten this working?

  12. 12. Michele Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    Your tool is great!

    I was thinking about a mouse feature that’s not exactly a gesture but would be great: the click-and-old to show contextual menu (like secondary button click). It was present in MacOS 9 and is present (with an hack) in Firefox. To be more clear: the SL dock behavior.

    Thanks a lot!

  13. 13. blakken Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 1:27 am

    Thanks very,very much for your developpement ,there is really some cool features.
    Honestly I haven’t found such a great program until ages.
    I don’t know if you could do something about but I found one gesture to be really usefull that isn’t present in your soft.
    Basically rather than using 2 fingers to move backward and forward that aren’t anatomcaly done for why not using only the one above the left side(or opposide for left side handed) while the one on the right is simply touching the surface.
    This way you aren’t forced to move your hand the wya to contain the mouse.
    What do you think?
    Thanks once again.

  14. 14. Noah Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 2:33 am

    Your program really puts the “Magic” in the Magic Mouse. I really enjoyed my Mighty Mouse but hated cleaning the track ball. If the track ball only would have popped out for cleaning I would still be using it. But it didn’t. So when the Magic Mouse came out I couldn’t wait to see it. After playing with it in the store I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t programmable. Then when I found out there wasn’t any quick way to use “Expose” I when home and cleaned my Mighty Mouse again.
    On Sunday I was looking around the web and found your program and just couldn’t believe it. After reading up on it and watching all the YouTube videos I could find about your program I was amazed by what it can do. So today I when out to the Apple Store and bought a Magic Mouse. Your program worked better then I hoped. Unless there is a virus in the code I think you should get a something for selling an Apple mouse. Do you have a place for donations?
    Thanks for your time Noah

  15. 15. Micha Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Hallo, ich bin des Englischen nicht so mächtig.
    Frage : gibt es eine Anleitung auf deutsch und ich kann nach dem neusten update nicht mehr vor und zurück wischen.

  16. 16. David Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    Great tool !
    I wanted to say: the best tool ever that has appeared in the make-everyday-tasks-smoother category for the mac. I probably would not be able to live without it anymore.

    OK here’s one issue:

    I am working with different keyboards (US, Spanish, Brazilian) and I am working a lot with the “Cycle Through Windows” function. That function is mapped to cmd+` on the US keyboard which is the key above the TAB key. That makes perfect sense. However when I change my keyboard layout to any non-US the ` key sticks somewhere else and needs additional modifier keys. That’s a nuisance. I therefore mapped cmd+` to the three finger swipe up with your great little tool. But to my big disappointment when I change my keyboard layout BTT changes that key mapping as well, i.e. now the three finger swipe up is mapped to cmd+>.
    Peculiarly it still works for cycling through windows – fantastic! But I had mapped cmd+shift+` for reverse cycling to swipe down and that one stops working. I was wondering is there a way to make BTT actually stick to the characters for keyboard shortcuts regardless of the layout?
    Or even better: couldn’t you add the “Cycle through windows” to the predefined actions?

    Thank you so much for your great work,

    David

  17. 17. FrogMe Says:
    December 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Hello,
    great tool to support more magic in the latest Apple mouse.

    One problem I have: when VMware Fusion is used, and the tool is running, from the first click in the virtual machine (running the VMware tools) has the effect, that no further click where ever is recognized (even by touchpad). Evenso keyboard-commands are of no further use. One has to restart the Mac – which indeed is a very sad thing to do.

    So, when working with VMware Fusion (latest Version 3 used) one can not use this tool. – very sad…

  18. 18. Rodrigo Says:
    December 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Hi, this is a great idea, but I’m using Maya and Nuke and I can’t get the middle mouse button function to work on my magic mouse… those anybody has got it to work somehow?
    Thanks!!

  19. 19. Simon Says:
    December 12th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Thanks for this nice tool. It really makes a magic “Magic Mouse”.
    I’ve got only one problem. It’s not possible for me to set going forward threw Firefox. Normally its CMD+[ (=or ] ) going one page forward or backward. I’ve solved going backward with the keyboard shortcut backspace but for going forward i havent seen a possibility until now.

    Thanks for answers
    regards

  20. 20. Brian Says:
    December 12th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    Beautiful app not had any problems so far :) can i ask if you could add cad/real clicks for the touch pad… i know mice are traditional but i work much quicker with the touch pads these days. :S other than that this is amazing

    thanks i will donate after the middle click

    peace

    Brian