Automation and integrations decision
BetterTouchTool
A minimal replacement for core automation/mapping is feasible for a competent developer, but reproducing the polished, widely compatible, and well-supported commercial product would take significant ongoing effort and time.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off80 h to build
$0/mo10 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- A local macOS app that captures user input (touchpad/keyboard/mouse/gesture), maps those events to user-defined actions or scripts, and persists/manage profiles.
What it still won’t have
- Cross-platform polish and years of progressive UX improvements
- Mature, bug-hardened integrations and third-party plugin ecosystem
- Brand trust and existing user support channels
- Ongoing compatibility testing across many macOS versions
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
BetterTouchTool does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a native macOS app in Swift that captures global input events (trackpad gestures, mouse, keyboard) and maps them to configurable actions. Stack: Swift + SwiftUI for UI, Combine for state, SQLite (via GRDB) or plist for persistence, and a launchd agent for background hooks. In scope: global event capture using macOS APIs, mapping editor UI (create/edit/delete mappings and profiles), execution of actions (run shell scripts, AppleScript, or system commands), saving/loading profiles, permission handling for Accessibility and Input Monitoring, and an installer/uninstaller. Out of scope: cross-platform ports, cloud sync, marketplace or plugin store. Include error handling for missing permissions, malformed scripts, and tests covering event-to-action mapping and persistence.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- Evidence score52
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 1
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productBetterTouchTool — Great Tools for your Mac
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
