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A BetterTouchTool alternative for people who just want gestures

· 8 min read

If you want your Mac’s trackpad to do a few more things and nothing else, Trill is a BetterTouchTool alternative built around exactly that: six ready-made Gesture Sets you switch on with one click, new gestures recorded by doing them on the trackpad, and a tick under your finger when one works. It costs $29 once. If you need the Magic Mouse, a Stream Deck, the Touch Bar or long chains of automated actions, BetterTouchTool is still the app that covers them, and it costs less.

The rest of this post is about telling those two situations apart before you spend money or an afternoon on either.

What BetterTouchTool is built for

BetterTouchTool, made by folivora.AI, describes itself as a way to customise trackpad gestures, the mouse, keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, Stream Deck and more, and then automate almost anything with chainable actions. Its site lists more than 600 triggers across input devices and more than 600 built-in actions. The devices go well past the trackpad: the Magic Mouse, mouse buttons and Logitech devices, keyboards, the Touch Bar, the Apple and Siri Remote, a companion app on iPhone and iPad, Stream Deck and other macro pads, game controllers and MIDI controllers.

It also carries whole feature areas that are not gestures at all: window management, a clipboard manager, a screenshot tool, a Spotlight-style launcher, custom AI agents and assistants, menu bar customisation, floating menus and scripting. It has been on the Mac for more than 16 years.

That range is the point of it. If you use several of those things, one app doing all of them is a real advantage, and nothing here argues otherwise.

What “just gestures” usually means

Someone searching for an alternative is rarely after a launcher or a clipboard manager. They want a handful of specific things the trackpad does not do out of the box. A typical list looks like this:

  • a middle click, to open links in a new tab and close tabs in a browser
  • a gesture to close a tab, and another to bring it back
  • a quick way to put a window on the left or right half of the screen
  • play and pause without hunting for the right key
  • volume and brightness without reaching for the keyboard

macOS covers some trackpad gestures already. Open System Settings and choose Trackpad: the Point & Click, Scroll & Zoom and More Gestures tabs list everything built in, from swiping between pages to Mission Control. It is worth a look first, because a gesture you already have needs no app. What macOS does not have is a middle click setting, a way to give a gesture an action of your own choosing, or gestures that do different things in different apps.

How Trill handles the same list

Trill starts from a set, not a blank page. Each of its six Gesture Sets is a few gestures for one kind of work, switched on with one click. The welcome suggests the sets that fit the apps already on your Mac, with a reason such as “Picked because you have Spotify”.

Against the list above:

  • Middle click. The Everyday set makes a 3-finger tap a middle click, in every app. It also makes mouse buttons 4 and 5 go back and forward in browsers and Finder, and leaves them untouched everywhere else.
  • Tabs. The Browser set works in Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox, Edge, Brave and Orion. A 4-finger tap opens a new tab, a 4-finger swipe down closes the tab, a 4-finger swipe up reopens the one you closed, and a TipTap right or left (rest one finger, tap beside it with another) moves to the next or previous tab.
  • Window halves. The Windows set puts a window on the left or right half with a 4-finger swipe left or right, fills the screen with a 5-finger swipe up, and returns it to its old size with a 5-finger swipe down.
  • Play, volume, brightness. The Media set uses a 5-finger tap for play or pause, a slide along the right edge of the trackpad for volume, and a slide along the top edge for brightness.

The other two sets are Writing (TipTap left or right to undo or redo, and a 4-finger tap to start dictation, in Pages, Word, Notes, Bear, Obsidian, Ulysses and iA Writer) and Developer (TipTap to change tabs and a 4-finger tap to show the terminal, in Xcode, VS Code, Cursor, Terminal, iTerm, Ghostty and Warp).

Making a gesture of your own

When no set has what you want, press New gesture and do the gesture on the trackpad. Trill names what it saw, you pick what it should do, and the rule reads back as a sentence, such as “In Safari, a 5-finger tap plays or pauses music”. Each gesture can work everywhere or only in the apps you choose.

The gestures you can record are taps with three, four or five fingers; TipTap to the left or right; swipes with three, four or five fingers in any of the four directions; a swipe in from an edge with one or two fingers; a click in any corner of the trackpad; and a one-finger slide along the left, right or top edge. Keyboard shortcuts work the same way: press New shortcut, then press the keys. The actions run to more than a hundred, from pressing a shortcut or typing text to opening an app, a file or a link, running an Apple Shortcut, an AppleScript or a shell command, and moving windows.

On a Force Touch trackpad, Trill taps back the moment it knows what you did, before the action runs. A Tick means a gesture was recognised. A different feel, Nothing here, means the gesture has nothing set for it in the app in front, which is the quickest way to learn which set is doing what. On a trackpad without Force Touch, Trill shows each gesture on screen instead.

When macOS already uses the gesture

This is where most gesture setups go wrong. macOS keeps some gestures for itself: four-finger swipes to switch Spaces, and a three-finger tap for Look Up if you have chosen that in Trackpad settings. If you give one of those to something else as well, both fire.

BetterTouchTool’s own advice is straightforward: it reacts only to the gestures you configure, and if you assign one that macOS already uses, you can turn the system version off in System Settings so the two do not both fire. That works, provided you know which setting to look for.

Trill does the looking for you. If one of your gestures is one macOS is using, Trill keeps yours off, says why (“Blocked by macOS”), and offers the fix in one click: turn it off in macOS, or pick another gesture. It changes a macOS setting only when you click that fix, writes every change down, and Put back returns them exactly as they were. The middle click is the usual case: when macOS uses a 3-finger tap for Look Up, Trill keeps the middle click off until you choose which one you want.

Where BetterTouchTool does more

An honest list, from folivora.ai’s own pages at the time of writing (October 2026):

  • Devices. Trill’s gestures need a trackpad; on a mouse, it uses side buttons 4 and 5. BetterTouchTool also handles the Magic Mouse, the Touch Bar, remotes, Stream Deck, game controllers and MIDI controllers.
  • Features. More than 600 actions that chain into sequences, drawing gestures, a launcher, a clipboard manager, AI agents and scripting.
  • Price. A Standard licence is $15 with two years of updates, after which you keep the last version you received; a Lifetime licence is $25. Both depend on country and taxes. Trill is $29 once.
  • Trial. BetterTouchTool can be tried free for 45 days. Trill’s trial is 24 hours.
  • Macs. One BetterTouchTool licence covers all your personal Macs. A Trill key works on up to 3.
  • Older macOS. BetterTouchTool needs macOS 12 Monterey or later. Trill needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

It is also sold through Setapp, if you already pay for that subscription.

If anything on that list is the reason you use it, keep it. Trill does not import BetterTouchTool presets, so a switch only makes sense if what you actually need is the shorter list further up.

Trying Trill without a commitment

Trill is free for 24 hours from the first launch, with every feature and no card needed; the menu shows the hours left. That is long enough to switch on a set or two, record the gesture you miss most, and find out whether the tick under your finger is something you like or something you turn down (Strength goes from Off through Light and Medium to Strong).

If you buy it, the $29 is paid once, not a subscription, and you have 30 days to ask for a refund for any reason by emailing hey@everydaymactools.com. If the trial ends without a licence key, gestures, shortcuts, the Hyper Key and drag to snap stop, but everything you set up is kept.

Gestures are not the whole app. Caps Lock can become a Hyper Key that sends Control, Option, Shift and Command at once, and windows snap to halves and quarters when you drag them to an edge or corner, so the keyboard and window side of a setup lives in the same place.

Questions

Can Trill import my BetterTouchTool presets?

No. There is no import from BetterTouchTool. The quick path is to switch on the Gesture Sets that match what you used, then record the few gestures that are left.

Does Trill do Magic Mouse gestures?

No. Trill’s gestures need a trackpad, either a MacBook’s built-in one or a Magic Trackpad. On a mouse, the Everyday set makes side buttons 4 and 5 go back and forward. Without a trackpad, shortcuts, the Hyper Key and window snapping still work.

Can I keep both apps while I decide?

Yes. If both apps answer the same gesture, turn it off in one of them so only one action runs.

Which Macs does Trill run on?

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon or Intel, as one universal app. Haptics need a Force Touch trackpad.