I bought an Elgato Stream Deck in the fall of 2020, and it came up recently that I may use it in a non-conventional way. Elgato has my attention as a gamer; I use their key lights, microphone, and even tried their web cam for a while (the web cam didn’t keep; I have a Sony ZV-1 and I’m happy with it).

I currently use my Stream Deck attached to my Macbook Pro for work; here are some of the things I have it set up to help with:

  • GitHub commands I can never remember (or, just don’t want to get wrong)
  • CLI commands for MacOS (especially the one I have to run after every update)
  • Zoom
  • Rectangle, because Mac doesn’t have the awesome screen snapping stuff Windows has
  • Code snippets I use a lot
  • Zakim commands for W3C IRC chat

So let’s talk about a couple of these use cases.

Rectangle App

Right now, I have an ultra-widescreen monitor. This is where Rectangle comes in pretty handy.

I have commands that give me a variety of configuration options but I’ve taken the ones I use the most and put them into my Stream Deck.

Stream Deck setup window with three rows of five buttons each. First row: left half, right half, center, left 2/3, right 2/3. Second row: Top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right, blank button. Third row: previous menu, left 1/3, center 1/3, right 1/3, next menu

I do wish that they would build this into the OS like Windows has, but until then, this works.

IRC

The W3C uses IRC for meetings, and notes are taken with a bot named Zakim. Since this isn’t a tool folks otherwise use, everyone is always trying to remember what the commands are (via various cheat sheets, etc). These meetings are still a bit intimidating for me, so to reduce my anxiety in the times when I do scribe, I set up my Stream Deck to help me with that.

Stream Deck setup window with three rows of five buttons each. First row: present, add self to queue, remove self from queue, become scribe, takeover scribe. Second row: display agenda, next item, close item, queue list, blank button. Third row: previous menu, pick scribe, blank button, end meeting, make minutes.

I still can’t remember (or find) what the command is to say something in IRC and make sure it’s left out of the minutes, but that’s probably for the best, anyway.

Other random useful macros

There are some other things that I find super useful to me to have available at the push of a button.

  • Blog Frontmatter (used this one while making this post!)
  • After MacOS Update: xcode-select --install
  • Conventional Comment Request: Please consider using [conventional comments](https://conventionalcomments.org/) when reviewing this PR. This comes in really handy when I’m submitting a PR.
  • An “approve PR” shortcut: This seems fine to me right now, if I think of anything else later I'll open an issue or a PR. 👍 :shipit:
  • Caffeinate to keep my computer awake for 8 hours: caffeinate -dist 28800
  • Caffeinate to keep my computer awake for 4 hours: caffeinate -dist 14400

There are a lot of uses for the Stream Deck, and it’s become a convenient tool for me to have this lil gadget on my desk!

Until next time. -M