Stuff I Use: Keyboard Maestro

The newest generation of both desktop and notebook Apple keyboards have nifty media controls built into their layout. Simple play/pause, track forward, and track backwards keys may seem like trivial additions to the previous keyboard layout, but when you want to quickly skip a track you've heard a million times or repeat a track you love, it makes a huge time difference to have these keys handy as opposed to switching to iTunes and switching or pausing the song that way.

For those of us wanting the ability to use these quick keys, but have slightly older Apple computers, there is a program called Keyboard Maestro that allows users to assign key mappings that would otherwise be impossible without upgrading to newer hardware. The program is very simple to use and allows for keys to be mapped to various functions including application launching, running scripts, application control, and assigning keyboard shortcuts to menu commands in various applications.

My main use for Keyboard Maestro is to replicate the media control keys on the newer Apple keyboards. I use my F6 key for play/pause and my F7 key for track forward. F5 is used by volume up and F8 is used for spaces (although I rarely use spaces that way,) so those aren't up for direct use, but these two work well to get my keyboard functionality close to the way I want it.

Keyboard Maestro also helps to replicate some functionality from OS9 that I've been missing; keyboard application launching. In OS 9.2 I had my keyboard set up so that F1-F4 launched all the applications I used on a daily basis, and while OSX has made application launching a much more simple task, it's hard to beat the speed that a single button launch command offers. I now use F1 to launch iTunes, iChat, Apple Mail, and Safari with just one keystroke.

One last comment is that if you're on an Apple notebook, the function keys are mapped to various functions such as volume, screen brightness etc, so you have to either hold down the function key while pressing the keys you mapped or change the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" preference in the keyboard and mouse section of system preferences in order for your new mappings to work.

A free demo is available from the developer's website