Esc - Panic All on Macbook Pros with touch bar

[Philippe Amand]

Hi,

I have been using Qlab on my new Macbook Pros with touch bar and I have been hitting the Escape button accidentally as it is not a hard key anymore. This is very confusing. It would be really great to be able to modify Panic All and Hard Stop all keys. Please consider this request.

Philippe

[Chris Ashworth]

Thanks for sharing your experience Philippe! I have put your words into our issue tracker where we are discussing the idea of remapping the escape key.

Cheers,

Chris

[JB]

Here are some things you could try until QLab offers a native solution for this. 

- Use BetterTouchTool to make a custom Touch Bar for QLab without the Esc key. I can't test this as I don't have a new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, but it should work.

- Alternatively, use Keyboard Maestro to Intercept the Esc key when QLab is in front. I attached a KM macro to do this. It works with a hardware Esc key but I don't know if it will work with a simulated Esc key press from a Touch Bar. The macro checks if QLab is at the front and if cues are running. If there are cues running, the Esc key does nothing. If not, Esc works as normal. That also means that you can't use the Esc to escape out of a text field you are editing while a cue is running. But this is a minor issue.

- Then, with the Touch Bar Esc key disabled and if you need the functionality of the Esc key via your MacBook keyboard, you can use the second KM macro I attached to simulate the behavior of the Esc key with another key. When QLab is at the front, cues are running and the trigger key is pressed, QLab receives a panic command. If it is pressed a second time while cues are still running, QLab receives a hard stop command. Beware that if you use that key while editing text fields in QLab and cues are running, it will also trigger panic and hard stop because the macro does not check if you are currently editing a text field or not. But this also true for the normal behavior of the Esc key in QLab.
To change the macro to another key, you have to edit the macro in KM in three places:
 - The trigger key for the macro (at the top where it says "This hot key").
 - The two "Simulate keystroke" commands at the bottom ("Type instead of panic" and "Type key as normal").

 - Assign all three to the same hardware key.

I have tested the "Simulate panic..." macro with QLab 4.0.11 on Mac OS 10.11.6 with Keyboard Maestro 7.3.1.

I am not affiliated with any of the developers of BetterTouchTool and Keyboard Maestro.

I hope this helps.

Jens