Moving from BetterTouchTool to Trill: your gestures in minutes
There is no way to import a BetterTouchTool setup into Trill, so moving is a rebuild. It can still be a short one: write down the gestures you actually use, switch on the Gesture Set or two that already cover most of them, and record the rest by doing them on the trackpad. While both apps are running, make sure only one of them answers each gesture.
Here is the move in five steps, along with what will not come across, so you can decide before you start whether to switch fully or keep both.
What will not come across
Trill does not read BetterTouchTool presets or settings. BetterTouchTool can export a preset as a JSON file, but there is nothing in Trill that opens it. Everything you keep, you set up again. BetterTouchTool presets vs ready-made Gesture Sets explains how the two ideas differ.
Some things also have no equivalent in Trill, and it is better to know now:
- Other devices. Trill’s gestures are for a trackpad, a MacBook’s built-in one or a Magic Trackpad, plus mouse buttons 4 and 5 and keyboard shortcuts. It has no Magic Mouse gestures and no support for the Touch Bar, Stream Deck, remotes, game controllers or MIDI controllers.
- Drawing gestures. Trill does not have them.
- One- and two-finger taps. Trill’s taps use three, four or five fingers. One finger is used for corner clicks, edge slides and edge swipes, and two fingers for edge swipes.
- The rest of the BetterTouchTool toolbox. The launcher, the clipboard manager, AI agents, floating menus and menu bar customisation are BetterTouchTool features, not Trill ones.
- Older macOS. Trill needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later. BetterTouchTool runs on macOS 12 Monterey or later.
If a lot of your setup sits in that list, keeping BetterTouchTool is the sensible choice. If your setup is mostly trackpad gestures, shortcuts and window snapping, read on.
Step 1: list the gestures you actually use
A setup built over years tends to hold more than you use. The goal is the short list of gestures and shortcuts your hands reach for every day, not a copy of everything.
The most reliable way to find it is to watch yourself for a day or two. Each time you use a gesture, note it down: what you did, what it did, and in which app. If you have BetterTouchTool’s Show Cheat Sheet action set up, its overview of the triggers you have configured is a useful prompt too, but the gestures you really use are the ones that matter.
Then sort the list into three groups:
- Things a Trill Gesture Set already does.
- Things you will record yourself.
- Things from the section above that Trill does not do.
Step 2: switch on the sets that match
Many common gesture jobs already exist in one of Trill’s six Gesture Sets, so this step may cover a good part of your list in a click or two.
| If you used gestures for | Switch on | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Middle click | Everyday | 3-finger tap for a middle click, in every app |
| Back and forward on mouse buttons | Everyday | Buttons 4 and 5 go back and forward in browsers and Finder |
| Opening, closing and switching tabs | Browser | 4-finger tap new tab; 4-finger swipe down to close, up to reopen; TipTap right or left for the next or previous tab |
| Window halves and full screen | Windows | 4-finger swipe left or right for a half; 5-finger swipe up to fill, down for the old size; 21 Hyper Key shortcuts |
| Play, pause, volume, brightness | Media | 5-finger tap to play or pause; slide along the right edge for volume, the top edge for brightness |
| Undo, redo, dictation | Writing | TipTap left or right to undo or redo; 4-finger tap to start dictation |
| Editor and terminal tabs | Developer | TipTap right or left for tabs; 4-finger tap to show the terminal |
One detail for middle click: BetterTouchTool’s own example is a three-finger click, while Trill’s Everyday set uses a 3-finger tap, with no press. The Browser set works in Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox, Edge, Brave and Orion; Writing in Pages, Word, Notes, Bear, Obsidian, Ulysses and iA Writer; Developer in Xcode, VS Code, Cursor, Terminal, iTerm, Ghostty and Warp.
The welcome also suggests sets that fit the apps already on your Mac, which is a fair starting point if you are unsure.
Step 3: record the rest by doing them
The second group, the gestures no set covers, you record. You do not pick a gesture from a list; you do it.
- In Trill, press New gesture.
- Do the gesture on the trackpad. Trill names the gesture it saw.
- Pick what it should do.
- Choose whether it works everywhere or only in the apps you name.
- Check the sentence it reads back, such as “In Safari, a 5-finger tap plays or pauses music”.
The gestures you can record are taps with three, four or five fingers; TipTap left or right (rest one finger, tap beside it with another); swipes with three, four or five fingers in any direction; a swipe in from an edge with one or two fingers; a click in any of the four corners; and a one-finger slide along the left, right or top edge, in steps. Mouse buttons 4 and 5 come with the Everyday set rather than being recorded.
There are more than a hundred actions, including pressing a keyboard shortcut, typing text, opening an app, a file or a link, running an Apple Shortcut, an AppleScript or a shell command, controlling music, volume and brightness, and moving windows. If one of your old triggers ran a sequence of steps, building that sequence as an Apple Shortcut and giving a Trill gesture the job of running it is a tidy way to bring it across.
Keyboard shortcuts move the same way: press New shortcut, then press the keys. Any shortcut can run any action, everywhere or only in chosen apps: give ⇧⌘D a job in Safari and it does that job only there. If you used a Hyper Key, Trill makes Caps Lock into ✦, which sends Control, Option, Shift and Command at once. It can be Right Command, Right Option or § (on UK and German keyboards) instead, and tapped on its own it sends Escape, does nothing, or still toggles Caps Lock. Only one app should be the Hyper Key at a time, so turn it off in one of them. How to turn Caps Lock into a Hyper Key on a Mac has the details.
Window snapping is there too. Drag a window to an edge for a half or to a corner for a quarter, with a preview in your accent colour, or hold Shift while dragging to see thirds and sixths, or zones you draw for each display. If macOS’s own “Drag windows to screen edges to tile” is on, Trill shows “Blocked by macOS tiling” and offers “Turn off macOS edge tiling” in one click.
Step 4: run both for a few days, without double gestures
You do not have to switch in one go, and the 24-hour trial needs no card, so running both side by side for a while is reasonable. The one rule: if both apps answer the same gesture, turn it off in one of them, or a single swipe will run two actions.
Trill helps with the shortcut side. If another app already holds a shortcut you set, Trill says so and names the running app that may hold it, which while both are running may well be BetterTouchTool.
Watch for clashes with macOS too. macOS keeps some gestures for itself, such as four-finger swipes to switch Spaces, and a three-finger tap for Look Up if you have chosen that in Trackpad settings. If one of yours is the same, Trill keeps yours off, shows “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, writes each change down, and Put back returns them exactly as they were.
On a Force Touch trackpad, the haptics help while you compare. Trill gives a Tick the moment it recognises a gesture, before the action runs, and a different tap, Nothing here, when a gesture has nothing set for it in the app in front. If you need Trill out of the way while you compare, pause it from the menu bar for 15 minutes, for 1 hour, or until you resume.
When everything on your list works in Trill, you can quit BetterTouchTool, or keep it for the devices and features Trill does not cover, with the overlapping gestures switched off in one of the two.
Step 5: take it to your other Macs
Once one Mac is set up, open Settings, then Advanced, and under Your setup use Export… to save your gestures, shortcuts and layouts as a file. On the next Mac, Import… loads it in place of the setup there, after asking. Scripts and app links in a loaded file stay off until you switch them on, and Trill saves the current setup in Backups before it loads one.
A Trill licence key works on up to 3 Macs, and “Deactivate this Mac” frees a seat when you retire one. That is a real difference from BetterTouchTool, where one licence covers all your personal Macs. Trill is $29 once, not a subscription, with 30 days to ask for a refund for any reason at hey@everydaymactools.com.
Questions
Can Trill open a BetterTouchTool preset file?
No. BetterTouchTool exports presets as JSON, but Trill has no import for them. Switching on a Gesture Set and recording the gestures that are left is the way across.
Will my scripts still work?
Trill can run an AppleScript, a shell command or an Apple Shortcut as a gesture’s action, so a script you relied on can be given to a Trill gesture. How to make your own trackpad gestures on a Mac covers recording in more depth.
What about my Magic Mouse gestures?
Trill does not do Magic Mouse gestures. If you rely on them, keep BetterTouchTool for the mouse and turn off any trackpad gestures that both apps answer.
Do I need to uninstall BetterTouchTool before trying Trill?
No. Both can run on the same Mac. Just make sure each gesture and shortcut is answered by only one of them.