CustomShortcuts is a macOS utility from Houdah Software that lets you assign, reassign, or override keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any application — system-wide, without writing a single line of code.
What is CustomShortcuts?
CustomShortcuts is a lightweight macOS app that gives you full control over the keyboard shortcuts attached to menu bar items across every app on your Mac. Where macOS's built-in keyboard customisation buries the option inside System Settings and offers only rudimentary control, CustomShortcuts surfaces everything in a clean, browsable interface and makes remapping genuinely instant.
It ships from Houdah Software, the same small Austrian studio behind HoudahSpot and Tempi — a team with a long track record of building well-behaved, Mac-native utilities. That pedigree shows in every detail of the experience.
What does CustomShortcuts do best?
The killer feature is breadth: CustomShortcuts can remap any menu item in any app — not just the ones Apple lets you reach through the Keyboard settings pane. If an app exposes a command in its menu bar, CustomShortcuts can bind it to whatever key combination you like.
- Per-app overrides — set a shortcut that only fires inside a specific application, so you never accidentally trigger the wrong command in the wrong context.
- Conflict detection — the app flags clashes before you commit, saving you from the maddening experience of a shortcut that silently does nothing.
- Live menu scanning — it reads your installed apps' menus dynamically, so shortcuts you create survive app updates (as long as the menu item name doesn't change).
- Remove existing shortcuts — not just add new ones. If an app ships with a shortcut that keeps stomping on your muscle memory, you can simply delete it.
I use it primarily to bring command consistency across my writing tools. Every editor I use now shares the same shortcut for "Focus Mode", "Word Count", and "Export as PDF" — regardless of what each developer chose to ship. That cognitive overhead is gone.
Is CustomShortcuts free?
CustomShortcuts is free to download and use for a generous set of remappings; a one-time paid upgrade unlocks unlimited customisations. There is no subscription. For most users the free tier is enough to cover day-to-day friction points, and the paid unlock is a single, permanent purchase — exactly the kind of pricing model that belongs on a power-user's Mac.
Who should use CustomShortcuts?
Anyone who has ever muttered "why doesn't this app support that shortcut?" is the target user. In practice that means writers normalising shortcuts across editors like iA Writer, Ulysses, and Obsidian; developers aligning IDE commands between Xcode and VS Code; and designers who spend half their day in Figma, Sketch, and Affinity and want identical key sequences across all three.
It's also excellent for accessibility — if a physical limitation means certain key combinations are painful or impossible, CustomShortcuts lets you redesign the entire keyboard landscape of your Mac around what your hands can comfortably do.
Where CustomShortcuts is not the right pick: if you need to remap keys at the system level (switching ⌘ and ⌃, remapping Caps Lock), that's Karabiner-Elements territory. If you want to trigger complex multi-step macros, look at Keyboard Maestro or BetterTouchTool. CustomShortcuts is deliberately scoped — it solves one problem exceptionally well.
How does CustomShortcuts compare to the macOS built-in keyboard shortcut editor?
macOS has offered app-specific shortcut overrides via System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts for years, but the implementation is notoriously finicky. You must type the menu item name exactly — including capitalisation, punctuation, and any ellipsis character — or the binding silently fails. There's no browsable menu list, no conflict detection, and no feedback when something goes wrong.
CustomShortcuts replaces that friction with a proper UI. You browse the live menu tree, click the item you want, press your key combination, and you're done. It also handles edge cases Apple ignores entirely — like menu items that share names across submenus, or shortcuts you want to suppress rather than replace. If you've ever wasted twenty minutes fighting the System Settings approach, CustomShortcuts will feel like a revelation.
What are the best CustomShortcuts alternatives?
The closest alternatives depend on how far you want to go. Keyboard Maestro can do everything CustomShortcuts does and vastly more — but it costs significantly more and has a steep learning curve that's overkill if you just want to remap a menu item. BetterTouchTool overlaps on shortcut assignment and adds gesture and Touch Bar support, making it a broader (and pricier) tool. Karabiner-Elements works at the HID driver level — it's for key-to-key remapping, not menu commands. For the specific, targeted job of making Mac app menus obey your shortcuts, nothing is as fast or focused as CustomShortcuts.
