7 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Elgato Stream Deck (2022)

Even higher, the software program features a Hotkey Switch perform that can alternate between two shortcuts. Press it as soon as, it sends one command, press it once more and it sends the different, alternating between them. This is usually a helpful method to construct advanced toggles, like working one script while you begin working and one other while you’re achieved.

2. Activate Mac Shortcuts

Apple’s personal scripting device, Shortcuts, can also be highly effective, and it is constructed proper into MacOS. That is usually a big profit by itself, however an unofficial plug-in allows you to activate Shortcuts proper from a button in your Stream Deck. 

This integration is made by GitHub consumer Sentinelelite and isn’t related to Apple, which is price protecting in thoughts. However, you possibly can discover the code right here. In my testing, it labored fairly properly, launching the couple of current Shortcuts I had with no need a keyboard shortcut that is not already in use or taking over house in my standing bar.

3. Connect to IFTTT

IFTTT is one other highly effective automation device that may function the glue between a number of providers. You can use it to ship your Instagram posts to Twitter with out the ugly hyperlinks, add your sleep monitoring to Google Calendar, or put movies you want on YouTube right into a Spotify playlist. And thanks to its Webhooks integration, you possibly can activate any quantity of applets (as the service calls them) simply by visiting a hyperlink.

This makes it simple to combine along with your Stream Deck. Under the System subheading in the app, you will discover an motion known as Website. Here, you possibly can enter any URL. When you press the button that you just assigned this motion to, that website will launch. In this case, it’s going to set off an IFTTT applet. For instance, you would use this to management your smart-home lights, swap your cellphone to Do Not Disturb, or anything that IFTTT can do.

4. Control Your Zoom Calls

The last item you need whereas on a Zoom name is to fumble for the mute button. This unofficial plug-in will help remedy that drawback by supplying you with devoted buttons to mute your microphone or video, begin or cease a recording, and even go away the assembly. 

If you are working the assembly, there are additionally choices to mute everybody in the Zoom name directly, or ask everybody to unmute themselves. These shortcuts work even when the Zoom window itself is not in focus, so you possibly can preserve your spreadsheets open or preserve getting distracted by Twitter with out dropping the means to rapidly unmute your self when the boss calls on you.

5. Chat More Easily in Discord

One of the add-ons constructed by Elgato particularly, this Discord plugin offers you the means to rapidly management just a few core options of the chat software. You can mute your microphone or deafen your headphones. There are additionally choices to rapidly soar to a preset voice or textual content channel. In the case of the former, urgent the button will routinely join your headphones and microphone to the voice chat.

Perhaps the most handy choices on this plug-in, although, are the Push to Talk and Push to Mute buttons. These enable you to briefly converse or mute your self whereas holding down one of the Stream Deck buttons. Having a bodily button readily available to attain for—it doesn’t matter what window is open—so I can converse up in a chat the place I’m muted after I want to is the type of factor that is made me respect having the further {hardware} on my desk.

6. Manage Your Music

Most keyboards today have some type of multimedia buttons to play, pause, or skip tracks in your music apps, however they’re normally fairly primary. Some of the Stream Deck’s integrations will be rather more expansive. For instance, the unofficial Spotify plug-in covers the fundamentals but in addition allows you to take away songs out of your playlists, change playback units, add a like to a track, swap to shuffle mode, and extra.

Elgato itself additionally provides plug-ins for Spotify and (*7*)Apple Music, although curiously solely on Macs. These each have extra primary performance, however they at the least enable you to toggle shuffle mode and, on Apple Music, hit Love on songs you want. 

7. Track Your Working Hours

If you are a freelancer, have strict work-life boundaries, or are simply interested in how a lot time you actually spend watching spreadsheets, a great time tracker is a great tool. One free device for doing this, Toggl, has an unofficial Stream Deck plug-in that makes it simple to begin and cease your tracker.

To get it arrange, you will want to enter your API key, which you will get from Toggl’s preferences web page. Once it is arrange, you possibly can press the button to begin monitoring your time. You may even create a number of buttons to observe totally different duties and ship them to totally different Toggl workspaces. At the time of writing, you will nonetheless want to use the Toggle cell or net app to cease the timer (urgent the button once more will simply begin a brand new timed entry), but it surely’s nonetheless a useful method to rapidly begin the clock with out getting distracted from what you are doing.