While the default single-finger Force Touch on OS X 10.10 performs a lookup in the Dictionary, I liked the idea of using Force Touch to perform web searches too. Here’s the settings that I think are really excellent with a Force Touch trackpad that also demonstrate some of the flexibility. Importantly, BTT adds support for additional Force Touch inputs on the new Retina MacBook Pro. So let’s hook up even more power by configuring BetterTouchTool to work with the new trackpad technology.īetterTouchTool (BTT for short) is an amazing little (free) application that extends just about any peripheral (keyboard, mouse, trackpad, Leap motion controller, Apple Remote, iPhone) to do a variety of interesting things. Force Touch is pretty nice now and I’m curious how I’ll adopt the new gesture over the long run. Now I no longer need to click and drag which means I no longer trigger Force Touch by accident. Right before I disabled the single-finger Force Touch, I found the setting to enable 3-Finger drag on OS 10.10 and saved my sanity. I often end up applying a Force Touch when I really just want to drag something across the screen. My biggest complaint is that the “Force” part is a bit difficult to master. The app is also available through a Setapp subscription.My review of the new Retina MacBook Pro was mostly positive but I was less than thrilled with the Force Touch trackpad. For $9, you get two years of updates and a permanent license to the last version released in that period. The app’s latest release, 3.600, brings it into full macOS 12 Monterey compatibility, including deep integration with macOS Shortcuts. If it seems daunting to build extensive trigger/action sets from scratch for software you want to augment, an active user base at posts exported settings that can be downloaded and imported into your copy with a double-click.

I would replace TextExpander with BetterTouchTool, but I sometimes have a choice between the two for a given purpose.

Each of those apps has a significantly different purpose from BetterTouchTool, so it’s more precise to say BetterTouchTool has a core competency around input methods, and intersects and overlaps with parts of the features of other common automation and workflow utilities. Vastly more complicated sequences can be built to trigger and perform actions in ways that more closely resemble Keyboard Maestro (or the late, lamented QuicKeys), TextExpander, LaunchBar, and other automation and shortcut apps. Almost anything can be an action, chained together with others.

Bettertouchtool review