Keycue Video Review and Giveaway
The difference between a new computer user and a power user is all in the keyboard. With the many menu commands in Mac OS X, if you really want to save time on your computer, you have to use keyboard shortcuts. Though it can be hard to memorize all the keyboard shortcuts in all your applications at once. Keycue, from Ergonis Software, presents a viable solution to this problem by allowing you to learn new shortcuts as you work.
Keycue runs in the background on your computer and allows you to call it with the click of a button. You can view all the menu shortcuts from the current application in it’s beautiful interface, and learn the command keys for these shortcuts. It is perfect for a new Mac user, or if you are trying to learn a new application like Final Cut or Xcode.
Ergonis, the makers of Keycue, have generously offered 3 licenses of KeyCue to giveaway on the blog. All you have to do is leave a comment with one feature that you would like to see in Keycue in the future. The giveaway will end May 14th, and the winner will be announced shortly after. If you don’t win a license of KeyCue in our giveaway, you can buy one for about $31.
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“If you don’t win a license of Photonic in our giveaway, you can buy one for about $31.”
I think it is KeyCue
Looks like something I could definitely use. I despise using the mouse for anything. One thing I would like is for the ability to change the keyboard shortcuts directly from within Keycue for a given program – as many programs don’t seem to give that option.
I would like KeyCue to notify me when I could have used a keyboard shortcut instead of going the ‘long way round’. For example, if I copied something to the clipboard using the menu Edit > Copy, KeyCue could use a Growl-esque pop-up saying something like, “Did you know the action you just used can also be activated by pressing ⌘-C”.
That way if I didn’t think to look at KeyCue, it will still teach me keyboard shortcuts.
I’d definitely like a HUD theme
It looks like a very good way to learn key shortcuts.
My feature request would be to have keycue learn my most used menu items and list them all at the top of the list in bold/highlighted.
This is a program that would assist me in being more efficient, especially since I multi-task extremely and would like to cut down on the time spent using my touchpad/mouse. I would like to have the ability to customize the menu colors myself instead of having to use the preset menu templates.
@Joe Fixed.
I like Ryan’s idea a lot – though that pop-up may interfere. How about if KeyCue were to generate a report on a per-application basis. The report would list the menu items most frequently selected, and what their shortcut is. In fact, KeyCue could use that information to change the boldness, and brightness of the font it uses to render it’s current shortcut list, and map the frequency of menu item’s use to brightness, boldness, etc.
The ideas posted above are fantastic. I’d love to be alerted when I do something that could have been keyboardier.
But – and this may be stupid – my feature would be the ability to call KeyCue up … with the keyboard. Your description said you “can call it with the click of a button”. Derrr.
This is such a useful program – I am forever forgetting the keyboard shortcuts! Although $31 does seem a little too much for what it does right now :/
Anyway, I agree with the above suggestions, they would all make Keycue even more useful. Two more I would like would be to show system-wide shortcuts too (like the shortcuts for taking screenshots), and the ability to set keyboard shortcuts to menu items that don’t have one yet.
I’d definitely love to have defining new shortcut keys for any menu actions. I do define some shortcut keys for which there’s no default exists. For example, Ctrl+Z is mapped to Window > Zoom!
Also, I love the Growl idea mentioned by Jeff T. But as an option, not default.
It would be awesome if we could modify keyboard shortcuts via Keycue.
An awesome feature should be a little popup window showing shortcut under the mouse.
I would like to be notified when i do an action with the mouse that could have been done with the keyboard through a floating popup thing, with the ability to change what appears in the popup (eg some people might want it to show a string “did you know you can repeat this action by pressing cmd C” whereas others may want it just to say “cmd C”).
Seems like an awesome app.
A great feature would be to have it track your repeated actions and suggest shortcuts for actions that you do often. That way you could learn all those keys much faster.
Also the review says that the Giveaway ends on May 7th. I wonder how I can go back in time..
If you could rearrange the list so that you could have, say, a group of shortcuts that you are learning, perhaps together or something, that would be nice. So that way your eye isn’t looking all over the list for particular shortcuts you are trying to remember and wasting time. It seems great though so far while I’m trying it out. Extremely helpful. Being able to set transparency level is pretty nice.
I’d like to see a graphical example of keyboard shortcuts in action. I’m a visual learner!
I agree with Ryan! It’s not as interesting to learn keyboard shortcuts by a quick menu when you can typically see the shortcut when you use the mouse and menu system. If you actively want to learn shortcuts, you can see them that way. Something like growl would ge a great way to learn because it is more in your face.
Also, a daily report would be cool that could give you suggestions of keyboard shortcuts to learn based on your most common commands utilized. That way, you can pick a few at a time and slowly knock them off.
Mastering the shortcut key leads to the improvement of the work efficiency.
However, it is serious to remember all shortcut keys.
The application of is very useful for a lot of people.
Do you want will have understood all Keyboard short-cuts of the application?
If it knows a lot of short cuts even a little, you will be able to use the machine more comfortably.
“KeyCue” achieves it indeed easily.
It is an application that it wants you to install it in OS by the standard.
It is a very simple application. However, it is considerably original.
I think that it is a great idea. It was necessary to notice the existence of this application earlier.
I endorse the growl idea mentioned above, but I’d only want to see the short cut keys display, not additional text. This feature needs to be a setting choice though, because it could become very distracting. It would be especially nice to be able to choose which applications would have the growl feature activated, because I don’t need this type of prompt for all applications.
I’d love to see a mode for finding special characters when typing text or for finding html equivalents. Something much like the HTML Entities widget.
Another useful feature would be the ability to chose shortcuts to remove from the list, so it’s easier to find the ones you don’t know once the shortcuts you do know are removed. You can also track your progress this way – you’ll be able to see at a glance which shortcuts you still have to learn.
Wow! There are really a lot of bright people with great ideas that read MacApper. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of something else that hasn’t been said yet, but to no avail. That doesn’t mean that there are no more ideas for improvement, but rather that I am probably not as bright as I thought. Even if only one of the above mentioned ideas got implemented, I would be very tempted to purchase this product, even though I have to agree, $31 seems a bit much. I think the sweet spot for something like this should be $19.95 (IMHO).
Agree that this can be a very useful application. The largest minus is that you can not add your your own shortcuts for specific applications. Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are power apps where Keycue does not show the Tool shortcuts. It would be very very usefull to be able to add those yourself by application in Keycue settings. If this would be implemented — what an amazing educational tool this would be when learning something like photoshop and illustrator and other complex applications! Again, this is the major drawback. I then second that styling of the window should be more customizable. Hope this will be implemented one day.
I’m disturbed by the trend on MacApper to only ‘review’ apps that are giving away free licenses. How can reviews be trusted when they are driven by giveaways designed to drive traffic to MacApper? This site seems to have become nothing more than a marketing tool for those shareware developers willing to trade some copies of their app for some blog space.
@Jimmni: Do you actually read the articles on MacApper? All of them are reviews. Maybe you are confused because the only articles that actually say “review” in the title are giveaways too? I think that’s to specify that it’s not just a giveaway, but contains a review of the product too.
I think MacApper is also being used by devs as a tool to get suggestions from the users to improve their apps, which is a good thing in my opinion.
I would like a way to have HUD, or a portion of the HUD, to run alongside the current application I’m using.
After watching the Video Podcast, I’m quite impressed but $31 is too expensive. I’ll suggest it to MacUpdate and MacHeist for possible inclusion in their next bundles.
it’ll be nice without the need of a “click”. mice are for cats!
One thing I would like is (like others have mentioned) some notification if the user did something that could have been done by a command. I think it would also be nice to have the choice to have a persistent window in case your monitor is big enough to have the room to view it at all times. This could possibly be customizable to only include some of the shortcuts most used to make it smaller.
On a side-note, I’ve noticed that the command key, which triggers keycue, doesn’t always activate keycue. I notice that if I click something with the mouse, and then soon after press the command key, keycue doesn’t show up.
Personaly, I’d love to have the ability to create my own themes. But for what it’s worth, the themes that are included look pretty awesome as well!
i really like the idea about making your own shortcut keys.
i’m not sure if other people would find this useful. but maybe u could include the option to have the keyboard shortcut list as a widget.
sorry, i just realized that the widget thing was probably a dumb idea. but i just thought of maybe a slightly better idea, where you could have a search bar or icon located on the top menu bar where you could type in the function that you want to perform and a list of shortcut keys could pop up matching the query or it would highlight the matching function on the keycue list.
Sorry for posting yet again, but another feature I would find extremely useful is country localizations. The keyboard on my MacBook Pro is not an English one, and so there are a lot of shortcuts that don’t work for me because the keys are in different places, and my OS is in English so I have no way of knowing if there is an equivalent for my keyboard.
Interesting App. I just lack a feature: There should be an “exclude-list” so I can choose the shortcuts-list not to pop up in chose applications. Would be annoying to have it pop up in an app where I use the command key for other purposes. Just thinking about Logic pro for example…
anyway, nice idea, keep on going:-)
V
I love this application and I think it’s a must have for every person seeking to become more efficient while working on a mac. The idea of adding a new feature which will track your menu clicks and suggest shortcuts is definitely worth considering it (just by looking at how many people found it useful here). Other than that, in lack of this feature, I think is easy enough to simply press your command key and look at the available shortcuts, it you really want to learn them. I would love to have something similar on my PC at work.
I like just about every suggestion above and fell I would get considerable use out of this app having recently moved from Windows to Mac.
My suggestion would be for an option to have KeyCue monitor the key strokes and when you start to regularly use the key stroke rather than the KeyCue pop up menu, it is removed from the popup.
Because I do not have a strong memory, this application is very convenient ;P
I think it is better when the function rugged to print the short cut list beautifully is added
This application changed my mac into the short cut dictionary. It is wonderful.
The work efficiency improved in dramatic form after beginning to have used this application.
It might be especially effective in the person who began to use Mac recently.
It is very useful.
It is not possible to part with when using it　once.
This may seem like an odd function to add, but my mother is very much non-techie. What about a way to ’simplify’ the options that keycue brings up? Such as a “beginner” menu with just the basics and let Keycue learn what you are doing with your mouse and then start adding those shortcuts. Not an easy addition, I’m sure, but I think it might be helpful for those that get overwhelmed by too many items in a menu.
I’d like it to keep track of menus or buttons I click and when I invoke it highlight those commands to set them apart so I can learn them. For example if I always go to Edit-> Copy. When I hold down the command the Copy commend would stand out with the shortcut command-C so I could start learning that combo.
Another setting option maybe to say the command I just selected when I brought up the HUD. An auditory response may also reinforce learning. “Copy, Command C”
I would like to see another HUD that could be brought up with a simple keystroke that would define what all the shortcut symbols mean. I live on my keyboard but still can’t remember what the shift symbol versus control symbol versus option etc… so having a quick HUD to define these would be fantastic.
It is obvious that this would be extremely helpful. Specially for those who recently joined the world of MAC like me… Sounds like something worth getting but $31 sounds a little expensive but worth it nonetheless..
As a relatively new Mac user, I find myself needing a little bit of help when I get stuck trying to use my keyboard shortcuts. I have to say that using the shortcuts and the keyboard generally are things that I’m loving about the Mac. I don’t know why I was on a Windows machine for so long. This program is definitely a must for me!
I’d love it if instead of just highlighting shortcuts starting with the keys I’m holding down, it focused the HUD and showed only those shortcuts, in a larger font.
This is a great little app. I’m really impressed by how simple yet powerfull this idea is.
The way to boost this app isn’t, in my humble oppinion, by bloating it with a busload of new features.
Instead I will suggest a carefull rework of the layout of the pop up window. With a better typographic design legibility could boosted tremendously.
I find myself pressing COMMAND and then squinting at the screen. A better spacing of the elements would be a productivity booster with an app like this.
But hey… great work
- Jens Poder
I think it would be helpful to call up the HUD and hit a single key, like “c,” and have it show what all the modifier keys would do. So I’d hit “c” and it would show command-c is copy, option-c is ç, control-c is whatever…etc., as a concise list. That might even lend itself to helping developers to use a more logical approach to the non-standard keystrokes. For example, command-c is usually the “Copy” command; however, in a browser, the command to view HTML source code is different–so perhaps seeing a couple of web browsers using command-option-s to show the source code would prevent every browser author from coming up with their own shortcut (like command-option-u in Safari, which to me makes no sense at all).
Another feature I’d like to see would be: 1) the ability to have the trigger key be something other than the command key, OR 2) Have KeyCue recognize when one or more keys (in addition to the command key) have also been pressed, and not launch the HUD in that case. Either of these would fix the problem of conflicting keys, though I like option 2 the best.
For example, I have CopyPaste Pro installed, and when I hit command-v and then continue to hold the command key, I get a pop-up with the last 25 clipboards in memory. However, currently, after a second I also get the KeyCue pop-up on top of the CopyPaste pop-up. So if KeyCue were able to recognize that I hit command-v and not trigger its HUD in that case (but ONLY when I hit command by itself), it would allow for both apps to peacefully coexist.
Ok, I think I’m done for now.
I love this application, I would buy it in a heartbeat if it was below $20. OS X Leopard is $110 on Amazon, Keycue is $31. Come on…
Have to agree with some other commentors: The prize is rather set a bit too high. The idea of the app is cool, it could be a nice little helper. But personally I wouldn’t consider to buy it at that prize. Make it much cheaper and sell more
V
this is a very nice product, i’d just really like to see it localized. I just recently bought a mac for my parents and this is something they’d need in their language (german) i know its not really a “feature” but something that would be really helpful
Quite simply, I’d like the option of the HUD remaining in view after having hit the activation key (as opposed to holding down the activation key). I realise such an option works against the beauty of the program but there are times I just want to browse through the shortcuts and not necessarily activate them.
And as mentioned before, better spaced text would be appreciated. Perhaps an hierarchical menu to cut down on visual clutter?
i love the idea behind this app and was just talking to a windows switcher today about some general keyboard shortcuts i know.
I tried the demo and couldn’t get KeyCue to perform reliably. I played with the setting, and it still wouldn’t invoke properly on demand.
It kind of appeared whenever it felt like it, so maybe there are some bugs the developer has to work out.
I love the idea of the program, though and I hope it’s tweaked and fixed soon. If it worked as advertised, I’d definitely consider buying a license! It really should be part of the OS, though, don’t you think?
(BTW, I’m running 10.5.2 on a 2×2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with 5GB of RAM, so I should be able to run this app pretty smoothly, right?)
@ Dean W.: We are not aware of any such problems. Would be helpful if you could contact our technical support at keycue-support@ergonis.com and describe your problem in detail.
Thanks
Ergonis Software
“The giveaway will end May 14th, and the winner will be announced shortly after.”
…It’s been almost a month now. Has this giveaway been forgotten? Who are the winners?
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