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Comment by ohlookcake | Hacker News Reader

This looks great. What's the closest/best Mac equivalent?

BetterTouchTool has a different approach, it's not a programming language per se, but lets you write JavaScript or AppleScript code to achieve anything you can do with AutoHotkey, and more. If BTT were available for Windows, I'd never touch AHK again.

Тhe closest equivalent is maybe hammerspoon. But the automation ecosystem on mac is much bigger:

- KeyboardMaestro is pretty equal, but is paid and takes a more gui-centric approach to automation building. Definitely more user-friendly.

- BetterTouchTool has a lot of intersecting features, but is more catered to gui scripting and gestures.

- Alfred has introduced automation scripts and triggers.

- There is also Shortcuts, which is sometimes quite odd to use and limited, but has the advantage of Workflows working on mac and iOS/iPadOS.

Karabiner Elements is very powerful and low level (so struggles with higher-level concepts like inserting a symbol or showing some GUI)

Keyboard Maestro has a great interactive UI, and also built-in UI panels that are also great as "cheat sheets"

BetterTouchTool is superb in touchpad/mouse control (but can also do shortctuts)

There's nothing exactly like it, but I use Keyboard Maestro for macros and such.

Is there anything AHK can do that Keyboard Maestro cannot?

Being free is a big one.

Yes, AHK is "lower level" regarding input tracking, so in KM left vs right modifiers aren't properly supported (though there are hackarounds that can make it work) Then the sripting language is easier for batch editing and various permutations with proper functions and variables (though again KM can be partially hacked around to make it easier)

applescript + hammerspoon

Raycast

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