Fruity Picks #13 - KeyCue 10 is a Game Changer for Keyboard Warriors

Last week KeyCue 10 became available and it was a real game-changer for those of us who use keyboard shortcuts in anger.

I was a bit of a late starter for using keyboard shortcuts despite having been a Mac user for over fifteen years. I've always relied on the mouse - maybe it's something to do with being left-handed, who knows? But over the last few years, I've come to rely more and more on keyboard shortcuts. This is partly because I'm starting to get more aches and pains in my mouse hand as I get older, but also because I've started to realise how powerful these shortcuts can be. This has also partially been as a result of using the Elgato Stream Deck to automate many of my often used shortcuts, keyboard and others, and I'll post about this in the near future.

Traditionally, keyboard shortcuts need to be added by using the Keyboard option in System Preferences. Within that preference pane, you select Shortcuts and then App Shortcuts. This is a really clunky way to create keyboard shortcuts and relies on you getting the menu structure absolutely right - a single spelling mistake will make the shortcut fail. For deeply nested menu items - the sort that would really benefit from having a shortcut - this can be a problem.

KeyCue 10 changes that, and allows the user to create dynamic shortcuts from within an application. I’m currently writing the draft for this post in Ulysses so I’ll use it as an example.

In Ulysses, there is no keyboard shortcut to insert an image into a Ulysses sheet. Using KeyCue 10, all I have to do is to find the appropriate menu item to perform the function - in this case, Edit->Attach->Image… and the using the key combination that I want to use, simply keep these pressed until the shortcut is accepted. 

This GIF from Ergonis explains it far better than I can!

If you're not familiar with KeyCue in general, I would highly recommend you check it out for the other primary features it offers. The biggest of these is that it will show you, at the push of a hotkey, exactly what keyboard shortcuts (user, system, and app defined) are being used and how. This will help you establish potential key combinations that could be used for a new shortcut without interfering with an existing combination. 

The software is available from Ergonis, and at the time of writing costs 19.99 EUR (£17.00)