 If you are new to Stream Deck, or maybe you're not new to Stream Deck, but maybe feel like you're not using it to its full potential, then this third video in my beginner's series is for you. Hello, and welcome to Take One Tech. My name's Alec, and in this video, we are looking at the third in my series of, well, a beginner's guide to Stream Deck. In video one, we gave an introduction to Stream Deck, and in video two, we looked at how you can go about initially setting it up and some of the basic actions that you can perform with it. And in this video, what we're going to look at is some of the other actions that you can use by accessing the plugins that you have available to you within Stream Deck. So if you haven't watched those first two already and think that that is something you need to know about, then I'll leave a link to those in the description below. But apart from that, let's get straight on into the next part, shall we? So I'll come over to my screen sharing, and this should look a little bit familiar to you, because this is where we were left off in video two. So I have got this running on my mobile this time, which is something I didn't have last time, as you'll remember. But so here we, if I press on my mobile button to go back, if you recall that little button in the top right, I had set as a little home button. So now I can flick between, go back into our little work profile or back out and come back into, maybe I'll go into a new one. So let me just, for example, I'll open up this little Excel profile. So I'm just switching backwards and forwards using the app on my mobile, we could do it on your stream deck, obviously. So what I want to show you in this video is as I say, we've already covered the system controls where you can add hotkeys and things like that and open applications or files or use it for entering text snippets and even controlling the multimedia. So volume, track, place, pause, things like that on your Mac. Well, I'm gonna come out of those ones for a moment and just talk about these other plugins that you have down the right hand side. You may not have all of those in there to begin with. There are a few of those that come in as standard. You can always rearrange these. I mentioned this in one of the other videos, but it's worth mentioning again, just by clicking on this little icon here. And then if you want to reorder these and put them in a different order, then you can easily do that by dragging up and down on these little bars on the right hand side. And also, if there's any that you don't want to see on your screen, then you can always just toggle them off here by clicking on the little arrows next to them, little checkboxes. So I've disabled my Streamlabs OBS and OBS Studio because the world has become a better place since I discovered Ecum Live. So I've just got my Ecum Live controls in here. So what these do is they allow you to basically carry out some functions specific to a particular application. So perhaps Ecum Live is a good one to start with because it's what I'm using to do all the switching of this video, switching between different scenes, starting my intro music, outro music, and all of that sort of business. So if I open Ecum Live, the here is where I could add on any of the functions that Ecum Live as a developer has created for Stream Deck. So that is one thing to note, is these are created usually by third party, either the application creators themselves. So these are actually by developers, by the Ecum Live developer has created this integration into Stream Deck, or sometimes you'll get third party developers who will develop the integration themselves. But what this allows you to do is, as well as just simple keyboard shortcuts, you can actually do a lot more functions such as let's just use the example of Ecum Live. If I wanted to switch to a different scene, then they have one in here, which is run scene. And so I could just drag this in. And then what you see in these boxes down here is gonna very much depend on the functionality that the developer has built in. But in this case, it's quite an obvious one. It's to run a scene. And at the moment, it will default to the current scene that I'm on, which I've called screen share, or share screen. And you can even see that it's got a little preview of exactly the screen as it looks at the moment. But I could change this to my main scene. And so this is all being developed by Ecum Live and has an integration into it. And so what this is doing is it's going into my Ecum Live Scenes list and it's pulling up all the different scenes. So if I click on this main one, for example, which is my main scene, funnily enough. And now if I press the button on my Stream Deck, it's going to flick over to my main scene. So that's how easy it is to just drag and drop those actions onto the Stream Deck for, in this case, Ecum Live. Now I did do a video all about how specifically I use Ecum Live and Stream Deck together. So I'll leave a link to that video in the description and also up in the top corner, of course. But for now though, let's just get back to these plugins because one thing to note about these is if you have got a predefined plugin created by a developer such as this one, this switching scene from Ecum Live, this will work no matter what application you are in. So even if I happen to be, for example, on a Zoom call or something like that, maybe I'm using the Ecum Live virtual camera to feed my feed from Ecum Live into Zoom, then all of these buttons that are predefined as Ecum Live buttons, they will work even if I'm not in the application. One thing to bear in mind with the shortcut keys, if you come back to remember with the hotkeys rather, so for example, the control C for copy, that will obviously work in whatever application you happen to be in at the time. So just bear that in mind. If you're programming any shortcut keys, they are specific to whatever application is open at the time, whereas these ones that are more like built in to Stream Deck will work regardless, they're more like global commands. Incidentally, if you ever do have something that you need to operate with a hotkey for a specific application where you might not be in the application at the same time, one thing you can always do is use a multi-action to do this. And so we do that by going to Stream Deck and doing multi-action. By the way, you can also just right click into a cell or into a button rather, and as well as create folder and paste and copy and paste buttons, you can click create a multi-action from here. And the way we would do this, if you wanted to have an action that has to be in a specific application, is if we come into the actions, the first thing we would do would be open application. If the application is already, this simply serves to switch to that application and bring it to the front to make it the active application, which is what we want in this case. So let me just think of an example and a good example back to E-CAM Live is activating demo mode. They haven't got a built-in button for that and demo mode is what you do when you want to share your whole screen, including all of the E-CAM interface. And the shortcut for that is Command D. Well, if I was wanting to do that say on a Zoom call and my Zoom was the active application, I'd need to get back to E-CAM Live first before pressing the Command D. So as I say, we would simply put Open A Program and even though the program is open, this is just gonna jump back to that one. It's a bit like sort of pressing Command Tab to get back to the application. And then I would come into my folder here where it's asking me to put in the name of the application. So just add that in. So this is Open E-CAM Live and then we would add our hotkey, which is Command D. And just pressing here Command D and there you go, it's assigned the hotkey demo mode. And then if I come back out of that, then now I've got a button which is this one. So that is demo, demo mode on E-CAM Live. And so that is how you would program a button which is a hotkey, but you need to be in the application for it to work. So that is a big difference between these built-in commands and that's why they are so useful. As I say, it very much depends on the developer in terms of the level of integration that they've created. And in terms of getting extra plugins, I'll do a video all about how to access the store, but I will just show you now how to get the plugins. So if you come up to this little icon at the top here, this is the Stream Deck Store. It's called a store, except everything at the moment in there is free. I think that they have been, this was a new feature that was added in version five. I think that they're building the infrastructure to allow third-party developers to offer their plugins and icons and things like that with payments available. But for the moment, it is actually all free. So when I click on the icon, it will open up this, which is the Stream Deck Store. And there's a little sort of splash page which has various different articles and things like that that you can look at. And then also down the right-hand side, left-hand side rather, we've got the plugins, icons, music and sound effects. I'll cover those in a different video. I did already touch upon them in the video I did all about the Stream Deck version five software update. So be sure to check that one out as well. But at the moment, we are just looking at the plugins. And what you'll find in here is a list of all of the different plugins that are available. And you can just have a scroll down through and see all of the ones that are available. Some of these are very good. Some of them are maybe a bit questionable. Not quite as good. But I'm sure over time, this will build out and there'll be more and more in there. You can see if it is not yet installed because it's got a big install button next to it. And as you come down, if there are any that are already installed, such as I have the Twitch set installed, then there is instead an uninstall button so you can remove it from there instead. So here you can see it gives you a brief description of what they do. And then you can, as I say, just click on the install. If you click on it, then it will tell you more a little bit about it, about who the developer is. In this case, this is by Algato themselves. This one is a little utility to display your CPU usage on your Stream Deck. Personally, you already have an application that I use for that in my menu bar called iStatMenus. I did an incidentally a video all about the top five menu bar apps for live streamers. So I'll leave a link to that video in there as well because I mentioned that particular application in that video. You can also have a little analog clock displaying on one of your buttons. I don't know why I have that still installed. I did have a little look at it. It's a little bit pointless really. And ended up bumping that one out of the way. Audio switcher is quite useful if you have multiple different audio devices plugged into your computer. So I do, I have headphones, my audio monitor coming out of my short MV7 mic, but then sometimes I want to switch and have the audio coming out from the speakers that are on my monitor, for example. So I can switch between them with that. Streamlabs, I don't actually use those ones. Zoom plugin, that is useful for some basic Zoom controls, but we'll have a look at that a little bit later, and so on and so on. I won't go through every single one of these. I've looked at a number of them, but yeah, when we get onto specific use cases for Stream Deck, I'm gonna do a little video on each of my specific applications that I use and how I've got them set up. But for now, this is just to show you that there are lots of other plugins. Spotify, if you listen to music, then that's quite a handy one to have because it gives you global controls to your Spotify whilst you are working away or doing whatever, and any others of note. Apple Mail, so this is possibly one to avoid. This will actually display the number of unread mail messages on your Stream Deck. Personally, I think that that's a bit of a danger, having unread messages displaying anywhere because it just sort of distracts you from what you're doing, but there you go. That's just my point of view. Another few that I use quite heavily is obviously the Ecom Live one I've talked about. PowerPoint, Keynote, Keyboard Maestro, which we'll come onto in the advanced section. And then, yeah, that's about all that I've got on here, actually, we'll see some others when I go in. But yeah, as you can see, there's quite a lot in here and this is how you install them. So if I just come back out of here, once you do install them, they will appear down the side here. So that one that I mentioned, Audio Devices, this one is just a simple toggle and it lets you toggle between two different audio devices. So at the moment, I could have this go between my Shure MV7 output and my monitor, which is this one, my Philips 43 inch monitor with speakers. So there, when I toggle this one, it's just gonna flip backwards and forwards and instead of the sound coming out of my headphones, it's gonna come out of my speakers instead. Find that quite useful because I do spend a lot of time on Zoom calls and things like that or recording these videos where I want the sounds come through on my headphones, but then at other times when I'm watching educational YouTube videos and the like, then I tend to have it coming out through my TV, through my monitor. I keep calling it a TV because it's about the size of a TV, but it is a monitor. So there are a few more here that I don't use. I should probably toggle that one off, in fact. And then there's some automation stuff that I have with a keyboard maestro here. And then this one, actually, if you are a keyboard maestro user, probably getting a bit too far ahead of myself, if you are a keyboard maestro user, there is the keyboard maestro, obviously plug-in, but actually this KM link is far better. And I'll cover that when I get onto my keyboard maestro tutorial. Now the analog clock one, that's the one I mentioned before. And if this, then that, so if you are, and if this, then that user, you can actually set up buttons to trigger some of your actions in there as well. But that is basically how you add in these controls. I should probably just mention Zoom because Zoom is quite a common one that people use. In fact, why don't we just come to an entirely new profile like this. And so yeah, you can see, you can just drag these onto the screen. So you've got a mute button. You can toggle your video on and off. You can see how it's got a red stripe through it. And then it's actually grayed out because Zoom isn't open. But when Zoom is open, it's either an active button, so blue with a white background or it puts that red stripe if the camera's off or the microphone's off and so on. You can also toggle the sort of sharing screen that you get in Zoom to share your window or whatever. You've got another button there to leave the meeting. So these are all handy buttons to have. I always find meetings coming to an end is a funny thing. People still haven't quite got the hang of exactly how to leave a meeting and never sure quite when to go and how to exit. And then you always see that moment where people are fumbling around looking for how to actually close the window. Well, you can just have a button for it, so you press that and then it will close the Zoom meeting and then yes, just some other basic Zoom related things. So then let me come down to this one as well. If you use PowerPoint or Keynote, then there are things here. I mean, obviously I tend to use one of my little clickers when I'm doing PowerPoint presentations but you can also have them programmed here. So another use case for this would be if you are doing a presentation with either Keynote, you've got the same sort of functionality in here, by the way. So play slide, next slide, and so on. If you were doing a presentation in Keynote or PowerPoint and you were bringing that into your Ecamm Live, for example, a bit specific that there you go, then you could control your slides with these slide buttons here and then also your Ecamm Live, all from one screen of your stream deck. So that is another use case and then these are a couple of things for Twitch and YouTube. Now, you may remember from my first video, I mentioned in the system preferences, how or rather the application preferences, how you could link accounts. So here you can link your Twitch account, your YouTube account, also Twitter and Streamlabs. So if you have got those accounts linked, then these things at the bottom here, these Twitch commands and YouTube commands will obviously work because you've linked it to those accounts. So that is a little sort of demonstration of how you can use these plugins as they are called to add extra functionality to your stream deck. And so it's really just a case of thinking about the applications that you use, going into the stream deck store, using that little button just up at the top there and checking out all of the different developers that have created buttons for your stream deck and finding out which ones take your fancy. Now, I will, as I say, be making a series of videos about my specific use cases of using stream deck with specific applications in the hope that it will be useful to some of you as well. And hopefully I'll get some feedback on them as well and hopefully I can improve on my processes as well. And I will go into some of the sort of advanced videos about how I bring this all together and combine stream deck with five of my favorite sort of power user apps, if you like, for the Mac, which are Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander, Hazel, Alfred and Moom, all quite random words there, but combining all of those things together, you can really achieve some amazing things with the Mac and yeah, certainly linking that all in with stream deck takes it to yet another level. So that's one video to watch out for if you are a Mac power user. And so I'll leave a link to that when I've completed it back into this video as well. But for now, if you have found this continuing process of this tutorial on a beginner's guide to stream deck useful, then please go ahead and like the video. Also, if you know anybody else who is a stream deck user, it would really help if you would share the video with others as well. And don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so that you get notified whenever I make any new videos. But as always, don't go anywhere because there are still plenty more good videos coming up next and I'll leave the stream deck playlist over there on the bottom right. Have a great day.