🎮 My Latest Mac Automation Tool is a Tiny Game Controller
John Voorhees at MacStories explains how he uses an adorable tiny gamepad as an ultraportable macropad for his Mac:
The buttons on 8BitDo’s controllers can be remapped, like on many others. 8BitDo’s free Ultimate Controller app, which is available on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, can remap every button on the Micro. The Micro doesn’t have thumbsticks, but it does have a D-pad; A, B, X, and Y buttons; four other face buttons; and L, R, L2, and R2 buttons. That makes for a total of 16 programmable buttons, an impressive number for such a tiny device.
A great idea for people on the go who wish their laptop keyboard had some additional buttons.
The really interesting part, though, is toward the end when he talks about using the controller with a device that has no hardware keyboard to speak of: the iPad.
8BitDo’s Universal Controller app is available on the iPad, too, and thanks to Apple’s deep controller support, it can be used for automations there as well. Of course, you can do more on the Mac thanks to its ability to set global hotkeys and its rich universe of third-party automation apps. However, between system-level keyboard shortcuts and those baked into individual apps, the Micro has a lot of potential for anyone from an artist looking for ways to quickly switch tools in apps like Procreate to a writer who wants a new way to navigate documents and manipulate text without a mouse.