are you using folders on your stream deck
well i was too but in my case that's because i totally misunderstood profiles and
i'm going to tell you why in this video hello and welcome to take one tech my name's alec
and in this video we're talking about stream deck now this isn't going to be a an introduction to
stream deck by any means this is more for people who are already actually actively using their
stream deck and specifically if you are using folders with your stream deck so when
i first got the stream deck and i'd had a look at the different options that you
have in terms of organizing uh different str uh screens on your stream deck and
one option you have is to create profiles and one of the key features that is highlighted
in this is that you can set a profile and then assign this to a particular application so
that whenever you open the application it opens up that profile and you have all of the commands
that you might need for that application to hand there is also folders on this stream deck which
allow you to create in effect something a little bit of a similar effect because you can create
multiple different screens if you like and have different actions within those and so be coming
from a probably a little bit more of a traditional background and uh being a big fan of nested
folders in the file the finder and so on then i did tend towards the nested folder setup and
also i wasn't so keen on having the stream deck automatically switch profiles uh depending
on the application i was in because often i might be in one application such as zoom for
example on a meeting but then i'm demonstrating something that is in microsoft excel and so i
wouldn't want it to switch to an excel profile just because i had opened up excel when i was in
the middle of a zoom meeting i would want the zoom meeting to read the uh the dominant application
there and so for me i didn't want it just sort of making its own mind up when it was going to switch
between profiles i wanted to be in control of that myself and so for me the folders root seemed like
the best way to go and i'm sure there are lots of people watching if if there are lots of people
watching i'm sure there'll be some people who are watching who will be shouting at the screen saying
that's silly profiles or the way to go but i'm just making this video for anybody else who went
down the folder route as i did and i'm going to point out what i believe was the error of my ways
and i found what i think is a bit of a better way to approach things and maybe other people who
are using folders may find this useful as well so uh if you want to leave a comment saying how
how crazy it was to go down the folder route in the first place be my guest but i'm well aware of
it so i'm now in my uh basically this is my ecom live stream deck view surprisingly enough
because that's the application i'm using now i've got this big orange home button at the
top so previously as i say i had all of this in a folder and this was effectively a folder and the
home button was the back button and this comes to my home screen so as i say this basically looks
very similar to everything that i was doing before with folders and just in case you're interested
along the top i have some volume controls this changes my speaker output whether i want it to
come out through my monitor in ear monitors or through my uh the speakers on my monitor uh then
i've obviously got this is mute volume up volume down this one switches my keyboard and mouse
to control uh my either my ipad or my mobile iphone or my mac and then i have this one to
flick between spaces on my mac along this row here i've got various different sort of i suppose
work roles really uh these are different uh views that i have or different screens that i have
for the stuff that i do for this channel and then i've got one for my podcast and then these are
four different companies that i'm involved in and so i've got different actions set up related
to those companies then on the next row i've got some that are more like applications so i've
actually got my calculator so if you missed that i did actually create a a desktop calculator out
of my stream deck so i'll leave a link to that video in case you want to make that yourself but
then further along here i've got basically uh sets of stream deck screens for different applications
so for example this one here is for my omnifocus so when i'm doing my task management and doing
my weekly reviews month reviews things like that i have various different actions assigned here
for different perspectives and things like that in omnifocus i will get around to making a whole
video about omnifocus actually because it is one of those mac apps that i use uh quite
heavily so there we go i've got different applications here i've also got another one
for dictation so sometimes i'm dictating uh text and things like that so i just have a button
here that i can press to dictate using siri dictation uh quick access to settings which i seem
to use quite a lot often in these demonstrations i've got another one which is actually a
it's a folder of folders for certain files and folders that i access quite regularly on my
mac so i have those on a particular screen and then here i do find myself using emojis and as
you can see i'm either happy laughing grateful or in agreement those are my four primary
emotional states and anything else i can pull up the emoji picker from here but that's basically
what my front screen looks like and as i say most of these things so for example all of
these applications and all of the sort of work states if you like were previously all folders
and what i've done is i've changed these all to be instead of folders they are now profiles so
if i come into my profiles or my settings rather clicking the little cog wheel uh you can see that
we've got basically all of those different things that i've just shown you
so my different work roles different take one tech profiles and then
different applications and so on as well and why is it better do i feel now to have these
all as profiles well i actually don't use the um you can you see this feature here which is stream
deck will automatically switch to this profile when uh you are in a particular application
and you can this is where you could click down and i could select for example i could select
photoshop so that it always opens up my photoshop apps when that's open or i could open excel
and have it open all my excel like um stream deck profile when excel is open but as i've said i
don't actually want to do that ever because of the way that i use these applications i'm often using
them with something else and so i uh i just want to be in full control of that so as i say that's
why i sort of ignored profiles for so long uh so i don't have any of these uh active by application
but the thing that is so useful about this way of doing things is that now for example i have
so if i go back into my take one tech recording uh profile which is this one i'm gonna press on
this button in fact i even made a nice little scene for you to see how i can use it the thing
that is different now is whereas before i used to create a folder for applications for commands so
say for example in this one i've got some other actions that are related to ecom live for my take
one tech channel but that i don't actually have active all of the time on the main screen uh but
i might want to access those when i also have a profile if i come back i've also got a profile
for streaming when i'm live streaming from uh ecom live on take one tech so i'll press this
button and this brings up my streaming uh screen which is very similar but it's not exactly the
same there are a few things that are different the instead of recording they're going live button
is different and various other things like that but i still may want to access those other
commands that i was also accessing from the other screen and by making them a profile i can simply
click this button here and it will take me to that exact same screen that i just showed you and the
reason why this is better is because before if i made a folder you could actually always i've got
a folder here so you can just copy the folder and you can paste it somewhere else such as like that
the only trouble is the contents of this folder are now completely independent of the contents
of the other folder and so if i was to have a you know set of secondary controls or something
like that then uh if if i change them in one i would have to go and manually change those in
another whereas you can just simply take the link to the profile and copy that and so i could copy
this obviously i wouldn't copy it into the same place but i could copy it into another profile for
example and there you go it would it would still be just linking to that one profile and if i make
any changes on that then those changes would be reflected everywhere where i've got that duplicate
command and i can also just as maybe an even better example if i'm on my front page so here
is my calculator profile let's say it's like that now i could come back here and if i copy
my little calculator from here just go copy let's say when i'm in omnifocus sometimes i
might need a calculator well i could actually just embed it right into there like that and so then if
ever i needed to access the calculator from there i just press on that button and it brings up the
calculator so the benefit really is the fact that it's exactly the same as a folder in many
respects you could still got all of the screen real estate you still have the uh the space
where you would normally have the say the back back up arrow to get out of the folder well you
can just have that linking to like the home screen or you could actually even have it linking to
multiple different places so if i come back to this example so i've got my uh my three different
sort of modes of using my tot take one tech profiles and then we've got those extra little
buttons that i want to have access to so i could have uh coming back to here again coming back
into my recording setup so these extra buttons which i have assigned to here you can see that
down the left hand side i've also can go back to any one of those three profiles so it means that
i can always get back to the profile that i was in so i know this might not make a lot of sense
if you are new to stream deck but as i say this is not a video that is aimed at uh new stream
deck users or people who haven't necessarily had experienced this it is more aimed at people
who are using folders specifically but maybe i should just quickly show you if we want to how
to do this because it is quite simple if we come into my preferences if you want to add in a new
profile you simply open preferences and just click new and bear in mind that you can have
multiple different profiles and you don't have to have them all linked to the front
screen you can actually change them manually so if i just put this as test profile and now
what you'll see is on the stream deck here you can change manually within the stream deck interface
but obviously you won't have access to that on the the stream deck itself but i can come down to
here and now i've got a completely blank profile you always get this little welcome button to start
with so let's just get rid of that one but then to link to a folder before we used to just right
click and then do create folder and then that would create a folder and you could double click
in that and you'd always have this back arrow to get back to the previous screen well if you
want to add a link into a profile you simply click on the stream deck section at the side and
then here you can just go to switch profile so this i could have this going back to my home
so i can just come down here and you can see in the profiles it's got all of your profiles
listed so i could have that coming back to my home profile and then obviously adding some pretty
icons incidentally all of my icons i've recently just been making all of my icons in keynote and
i made a video all about how you can do that so i'll link to that in the in the description and
in the top corner when i get around to it as well and so this pressing this button here
would take me back to that home screen so i hope that you have found that useful and if you
have found it useful then obviously don't forget to go and hit that like button and subscribe to
the channel and i'll be making a whole series of videos all about uh stream deck in particular and
i'll be starting actually probably the next one i make will be a total beginner's guide to stream
deck because although i've made a few videos about stream deck i haven't actually done the
sort of total beginner's guide so if you were a little bit lost for from this video then do
watch out for that video and also i'll leave a link to my stream deck playlist over on the right
hand side so until the next time have a great day