BetterTouchTool

BetterTouchTool is a paid Mac utility by Andreas Hegenberg that lets you remap, extend, and automate virtually every input device on your Mac — trackpad, Magic Mouse, keyboard, Siri Remote, Stream Deck, and more — through a deep visual rule engine with no coding required.

What is BetterTouchTool?

BetterTouchTool (BTT) is a macOS input customization and automation platform that intercepts gestures, keystrokes, and hardware events and routes them to any action you define — launching apps, triggering shell scripts, resizing windows, sending custom key sequences, or firing Apple Shortcuts. It ships as a single app from folivora.ai and has been actively maintained by its solo developer for well over a decade.

The scope is genuinely unusual. On the trackpad alone you can define gestures by finger count, direction, pressure, and sequence. Pair that with a window-snapping engine, a clipboard manager, a Touch Bar configurator (for those who still have one), and a floating widget layer called BTT Remote, and you start to understand why longtime Mac users treat it as infrastructure rather than an app.

What does BetterTouchTool do best?

BTT's strongest suit is gesture-to-action density — the sheer number of distinct triggers it recognizes far exceeds anything built into macOS, and each trigger can fire a layered action sequence rather than a single command.

• Trackpad gestures: three-finger swipe to close a tab, four-finger tap to paste plain text, a tip-tap right to switch spaces — all per-app if you like.
• Window snapping: drag a window to a screen edge or corner and it snaps to a preset size. Rivals Moom and Magnet, but baked right in alongside everything else.
• Keyboard shortcuts: remap any key globally or per-application, build hyper-key workflows, chain key sequences that macOS's own shortcut system can't express.
• Stream Deck & MIDI: map hardware buttons and knobs to system actions without leaving the BTT interface.
• Named Triggers & Conditionals: build mini-workflows with IF/ELSE branches — arguably a lightweight alternative to Keyboard Maestro for moderate automation needs.

I run BTT primarily for three-finger drag (which Apple inexplicably buried), a four-corner snap grid, and a custom clipboard stack mapped to a single gesture. Those three features alone justify the price for me.

How much does BetterTouchTool cost?

BetterTouchTool is a paid app sold directly from folivora.ai — it is not on the Mac App Store. Andreas Hegenberg offers both a one-time perpetual license and a two-year license at a lower entry price; a free 45-day trial lets you evaluate the full feature set before committing. There is no subscription, no feature gating, and updates within the licensed period are included.

Given what it replaces — a window manager, a gesture configurator, a keyboard remapper, and optionally a Touch Bar tool — the price is modest. Comparable purpose-built apps (Moom, Keyboard Maestro, Swish, Keystroke Pro) would cost considerably more in aggregate.

Who should use BetterTouchTool?

Power users who think in gestures and keyboard shortcuts will get the most out of BTT immediately. If you have ever wished your Mac trackpad behaved more like a programmable input surface — or if you find yourself reaching for the mouse when you'd rather not — BTT is the right tool.

It is less suited to casual users who are happy with macOS defaults. The preferences window is enormous, and the learning curve is real: you will spend an evening getting your first config right. That said, the community maintains a rich preset-sharing ecosystem, and reasonable starter configs are a download away.

Developers, writers, video editors, and anyone managing many windows across multiple displays tend to become the most devoted users. If you already rely on Raycast or Alfred for launcher tasks, BTT slots in alongside them without conflict — they operate at different layers of the input stack.

What are the best BetterTouchTool alternatives?

For window management alone, Moom and Magnet are simpler and friendlier to configure. For keyboard automation at a deeper level, Keyboard Maestro is more powerful and better suited to complex multi-step workflows. For trackpad gesture customization specifically, Swish offers a cleaner, more opinionated experience with less setup.

None of those alternatives replicate BTT's breadth in a single install. If you want one tool that covers gestures, window snapping, keyboard remapping, and hardware button mapping simultaneously, BetterTouchTool has no direct equivalent on the Mac.