The following is a summary and additional information about the screen and corner triggers features in BetterTouchTool. These features allow you to triggers keyboard shortcuts, menu items, and lots more simply by dragging your cursor to designated corners or the top and bottom of your screen.
You can download free trial of BetterTouchTool using my affiliate link. Also check out my BetterTouchTool articles.
Corner and Screen Edge Triggers
The corner triggers in BetterTouchTool are similar to the default Mission Control Hot Corners in macOS. When you drag your cursor to a designated corner, you can trigger an assigned action, such as putting your desktop display asleep, or showing all open application windows.
While the macOS provides about a dozen actions for its hot corners, BetterTouchTool provides over a hundred actions, including the ability to trigger keyboard shortcuts and menu items in any application.
My BetterTouchTool Trigger
Though I have hundreds of BTT triggers, my hot corners triggers are ones I have started to use throughout the day. Some of these triggers include the following:
- A Move Mouse to Bottom Edge of Screen trigger to toggle the Play/Stop button of Google Play.
- Move Mouse to Top Right Corner for hiding and showing the numerous ScreenFloat shots I take throughout the day for various projects I’m working on like this article
- A Move Mouse Away From Bottom Right Corner to quick resize the front window in the desktop screen recorder, ScreenFlow. This is an application-specific trigger.
Each of the above corner and edge triggers could easily be assigned to finger gesture triggers, but for a heavy BTT user like myself, I’ve practically run out of my favorite finger gestures. The corner triggers provide a few more ways to trigger actions when my hand is already on my trackpad.
How to Use Corner Triggers
Here’s the step-by-step guide for creating a hot corner trigger.
- In BTT 3.0, click the drop-down Trigger Devices and select Named & Other Triggers
- Select a Screen Corner for trigger. You might have to disable an assigned hot corner if it’s already being used by a Mission Control Hot Corner in System Preferences.
- Delay Time
You might want to set a delay time for the trigger to fire so that it doesn’t fire accidentally move your cursor to the designated corner or edge of the
screen. You might also add a note about what the trigger does.
- Select an Action
Input the action you want to trigger. You can trigger a keyboard shortcut, a menu item, or one of hundreds of BTT predefined actions.
Your Feedback
Let me know what you think of this screen and corner trigger in BetterTouchTool, and how you are using it.
I finally got around to setting this up Bakari. Very useful and clear video.
BTT is an unbelievably useful tool.
Awesome, Mike. Great to hear that. I’m using those BTT triggers everyday. Serious time saver.
I wanted to use a screen corner to launch a URL, but from a specific browser, one that i don’t have set as my default browser. Is there a way to do that?