Alternates

One button can carry several actions: Merge and Merge All, a split that runs three ways, one script with four values. The button runs one of them on a plain click, and the others are a modifier or a long press away.

Run an alternate

Hold Alt, Shift or Ctrl while you click. On macOS, a Ctrl alternate is typed with Command.

Hold the modifier before you click and every button bound to it wears that action’s name and icon, so you can see what the click will do before you make it. Let go and the buttons go back. Nothing is changed by holding a key.

The flyout

Long-press a button to fan out everything it can do: its own action first, then its alternates, each with the modifier it answers to. Slide onto one and let go to pick it.

Picking is not running. The picked action becomes what a plain click runs, and the button wears its name and icon from then on, so a click always runs the thing you are looking at. Pick the button’s own action to put it back.

A small triangle in the bottom-right corner marks a button that has alternates, in both list and grid view. An alternate whose target button is gone stays in the flyout, named and disabled.

Your pick stays on this computer. It is not part of a collection you share.

Give a button alternates

Open the button editor and find the Alternates section at the foot of the form. Two kinds:

• Run another button: points at a button in your library, wherever it lives. Editing that button updates every button pointing at it.
• Run this script with a value: runs this button’s own script with a different value. Script buttons only. How the script reads it is on Script Arguments.

Each row can bind Alt, Shift or Ctrl, one binding each. A row with no modifier is reachable from the flyout. A button holds up to 12 alternates.

Deleting a button names the buttons that were relying on it first.

Alt-click and the editor

Alt-click normally opens a button’s editor. On a button that binds Alt to an action, Alt runs the action instead. Edit mode and the right-click menu always open the editor, and Alt-click editing itself can be turned off under Menu > Settings > Preferences.

Sharing

Alternates travel in an exported collection, along with any button an alternate points at, even one that sits in no collection. If something has to be left out, the import says so.