7 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Elgato Stream Deck (2022)

Even better, the software includes a hotkey toggle feature that toggles between two shortcuts. Press it once, it sends a command, press it again and it sends the other, alternating between them. This can be a useful way to create complex toggles, e.g. B. Running one script when you start work and another when you’re done.

2. Enable Mac Shortcuts

Apple’s own scripting tool, Shortcuts, is also powerful and built right into MacOS. That in itself can be a huge benefit, but an unofficial plugin lets you enable shortcuts right from a button on your stream deck.

This integration is made by GitHub user Sentinelelite and is not affiliated with Apple, which is worth noting. However, you can find the code here. In my testing it worked pretty well, launching the few existing shortcuts I had without needing a keyboard shortcut that isn’t already in use or taking up space in my status bar.

3. Connect to IFTTT

IFTTT is another powerful automation tool that can act as a link between multiple services. You can use it to send your Instagram posts to Twitter without the ugly links, add your sleep record to Google Calendar, or add videos you like on YouTube to a Spotify playlist. And thanks to webhooks integration, you can activate any number of applets (as the service calls them) simply by visiting a link.

This makes it easier to integrate into your stream deck. Under the System subheading in the app, you’ll find an action called Website. You can enter any URL here. When you press the button to which you assigned this action, this site will be launched. In this case, an IFTTT applet is triggered. For example, you can use this to control your smart home lights, switch your phone to Do Not Disturb, or anything else IFTTT can do.

4. Control your Zoom calls

The last thing you want during a Zoom call is fumbling for the mute button. This unofficial plugin can help solve this problem by giving you dedicated buttons to mute your microphone or video, start or stop a recording, and even exit the meeting.

If you’re hosting the meeting, there are also options to mute everyone on the Zoom call at once, or ask everyone to unmute. These shortcuts work even when the Zoom window itself isn’t in focus, so you can keep your spreadsheets open or constantly distracted by Twitter without losing the ability to quickly mute yourself when the boss calls you.

5. Easier to chat in Discord

One of the add-ons specially developed by Elgato, this Discord plugin gives you the ability to quickly control some core functions of the chat application. You can mute your microphone or deafen your headphones. There are also options to quickly jump to a preset voice or text channel. In the first case, pressing the button will automatically connect your headphones and microphone to voice chat.

Perhaps the most convenient options in this plugin, however, are the Push to Talk and Push to Mute buttons. These allow you to temporarily speak or mute yourself while holding down any of the stream deck buttons. Having a physical button handy that I can reach for — no matter what window is open — so I can speak in a chat where I’m muted if I need to is the kind of thing that got me into it has to appreciate the extra hardware on my desk.

6. Manage your music

Most keyboards these days have some kind of multimedia keys for playing, pausing, or skipping tracks in your music apps, but they’re usually pretty basic. Some of the Stream Deck’s integrations can be much richer. For example, the unofficial Spotify plugin covers the basics, but also lets you remove songs from your playlists, change playback devices, like a song, switch to shuffle mode, and more.

Elgato itself also offers plugins for Spotify and Apple Music, but curiously only on Macs. These two have more basic functions, but you can at least toggle shuffle mode and click Love on Apple Music on songs you like.

7. Track your working hours

If you’re a freelancer, have strict work-life boundaries, or are just curious about how much time you really spend staring at spreadsheets, a good time tracker is a useful tool. A free tool for this, Toggl, has an unofficial Stream Deck plugin that makes it easy to start and stop your tracker.

To set it up, you need to enter your API key, which you can get from Toggl’s settings page. Once it’s set up, you can press the button to start tracking time. You can even create multiple buttons to track different tasks and send them to different Toggl workspaces. At the time of writing, you’ll still need to use the Toggle mobile or web app to stop the timer (pressing the button again will just start a new timed entry), but it’s still a handy way to set the clock quickly to start without getting distracted from what you are doing.