First: Keyboard Maestro is awesome, and I'm always amazed by what people achieve by combining all the different productivity apps available on macOS. (I'm not actually using many myself, even using my own stuff is often too much ;-))
This year has been pretty stressful and I admit I haven't been good at answering every question on my forum. However it's getting better (both of our kids now have proper daycare ). However I have been reading every post on the BTT forum. If I don't reply quickly, it usually means I don't have an answer available at the time. For e-mails I only read license related things though, I can't handle support requests via e-mail.
The preferences window issue has been really annoying, especially because I have never been able to reproduce it on any of my machines. I recently had a deeper look on this again and collected various logs from users. I believe the new v4.275 alpha might help, but I can't be sure.
Okay. I have officially ditched the Elgato software and turned Stream Deck control over to BTT.
On the whole, it's great. Not perfect but much much better. Profiles? Forget about them. BTT can enable/disable sets of buttons as needed across apps. I can send commands from the Stream Deck to KBM, and back as well.
The only thing slowing me down is trying to come up with buttons that represent the commands I assign.
Hey @Andreas_H, thanks for chiming in here and shedding a little light on your situation. We appreciate what you are able to do, especially considering having kids adds a new level of complexity to a person’s life.
By the way. BTT offers two modes for Stream Deck Control: Full Control (here BTT takes over the Stream Deck hardware exclusively and handles everything) and "Plugin Mode" (here BTT works as a standard Stream Deck Plugin.
In general Plugin Mode would be great, but unfortunately the Stream Deck Plugin system is missing one little but important thing (Reddit - Dive into anything) which can make that mode a bit unpredictable.
A lot of users are frustrated by Elgato's unwillingness to offer any method of programmatic profile switching for their Stream Deck products, and have resorted to janky methods like opening and closing blank applets that trigger associated profiles. I'm sure you're aware of this and it must have informed your development of these tools.
The level of control offered by BTT (if I understand it correctly) sounds great, but I'm reluctant to rebuild all my SD profiles, as it would be quite time-consuming. I may change my mind though, as the ability to switch profiles dependent on anything other than which application is front-most is huge. Elgato are really hobbling their software by ignoring this.
Could you briefly describe what the plugin is designed to do?
You can add the plugin to your existing Stream Deck setup multiple times (as many times as you want) and BTT will then only "take over" that particular part of the Stream Deck. This means you can mix BTT's functionality with Elgato's functionality. (See Stream Deck · GitBook)
Am I right to think that this is similar to the way the standard Keyboard Maestro SD plugin works? It appears that the main advantages of using BTT instead might be:
More user-friendly interface for setting up SD layouts.
Built in button mode variations (short/long press, repeat etc...)
honestly I don’t know! Basically the plugin mode allows you to put (dynamic) buttons on parts of the Deck. These buttons can change based on the app, preset, conditional activation groups, or based on scripts etc.
BTT internally creates a virtual steam deck with the number of buttons you have added in the Elgato app. This virtual steam deck is active as long as the plugins buttons are visible on the Deck. Because of this architecture even folders can be put there and will open on the defined buttons
(both of our kids now have proper daycare 
). However I have been reading every post on the BTT forum. If I don't reply quickly, it usually means I don't have an answer available at the time. For e-mails I only read license related things though, I can't handle support requests via e-mail.
