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Comment by mleo | Hacker News Reader

StreamDeck and Keyboard Maestro are a great pair. w With KM’s ability to update the keys on StreamDeck I use it as dashboard for items in addition to actions. A key displays next upcoming meeting and changes color as it gets close. Another key shows the current VPN IP in case I need to target internal services back to my development instance. For Teams, I have button that toggles the resolution of second Studio Display to share desktop with lower resolution.

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Do you need to use the Stream Deck's own software at all, then? I'm allergic to janky manufacturer-provided config apps (I'm looking at you, Logitech), and the Stream Deck app's screenshots aren't awe inspiring. I'm also uneasy about running a driver app in the background at all times to monitor which apps I'm using. That seems ripe for abuse, either by attackers who find a vulnerability in it or by the manufacturer ("hey, you seem to spend a lot of time in Drafts.app. Would you like to buy a JavaScript manual?").

Unfortunately, the StreamDeck doesn't emulate a standard USB HID device, so it needs a driver running in the background to detect button presses and do things like generate keystrokes or call Keyboard Maestro macros.

There's streamdeck-ui (https://timothycrosley.github.io/streamdeck-ui/), which is an open-source alternative, but it at first glance it seems to be only for Linux.

There are a bunch of other macro/launcher pads like the StreamDeck that DO act as standard USB HID keyboards, though, and those should work fine with Keyboard Maestro using keyboard shortcut triggers.

Ah, that makes sense.

Those other controllers are neat, but I want the pretty pictures, darn it!

> Unfortunately, the StreamDeck doesn't emulate a standard USB HID device

But it does expose itself as a custom HID device! This project uses connects to all the StreamDeck models over WebHID. https://github.com/petele/StreamDeck-Meet

So I think the driver paranoid are actually in a decent spot.

You must use it, but it’s not that bad tbh

If we say that Logitech app is 10 on a scale good to, well, Logitech, then Streamdeck’s software is ~3

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