 Algato have just released version six point two of the stream deck software and it's got an awesome new feature added in that I know certainly for me as somebody who uses the stream debt primarily for personal productivity really I mean I bought it as a streaming device but now I just realized that it is the ultimate productivity tool so and there's one feature that they've added in which I know that a lot of people using it in this way have been asking for. And there's a couple of other nice features as well so not a major update by any stretch but definitely worth talking about here so before that though if you have not yet updated your stream deck let me just tell you how you can do that. If you go into your stream deck application then just head up to the little cog icon just up in the top here click on that and then you'll see in the general tab in the preferences that you do have a check for updates button here. So you just want to make sure you've got six dot two dot something so that is the latest version. Incidentally whenever you do update the software it's always worth coming back after the update has been completed and just go immediately into your devices section and then just go down the list of devices you've got so however many you've got plugged in I have five stream decks currently and a couple of mobile devices. But when you go through the the list go down to each one and just double check the firmware because sometimes a software update can trigger a firmware update to the device. And I certainly noticed that there's a couple of updates available for the pedal but maybe that is because one of them was recently added to the setup so anyway just go through the list of devices that you have and just check for firmware updates. Incidentally whereas when the general tab here and you will always see the check for updates button so you can go and check for updates in devices there is no check for updates for firmware. But if there is a firmware update available you will see a button that says update firmware so if you don't see that button then there is no update available. Anyway so let's get on into the actual updates themselves and the first one is related to font settings and obviously we have been able to change the style of the text. So here you can see a few just sample actions here and we've got some text on the button and you can come down to the little font icon here or the little T icon I should say and you can change things like the position of the text on the screen. You can see how it's actually changing on the button there and then you can change obviously the font font size bold italic under underline and so on and then also the font color. But obviously when you've got lots of buttons on here then it can be a task to go through and update them if you want to change the styling. Well now they've added in a global setting for that and once again click on the preferences and that will open up the little preferences window and now you can see we've got this tab here new tab which is called style. Clicking on style you'll see that we've now got global font settings and so you can change all of those same things. So if I want to change the font to something different and then change the size maybe change the color and then just click on apply. You'll notice that all of these buttons now have this new style applied to them that I've just created in here all except one which is this one and that's because I basically over read the setting there by going in and changing it manually. So that means that you can still have a separation if you want to have a general setting for most of the buttons but then maybe you want something specific on a particular button. You can always come into a specific button and change the styling on that one completely separately to any of the others so you can see we've got that different styling. Once again coming back into here if I was to change this color now to a different color click on OK and then apply then you can see how it's just applied to those ones that didn't have a custom setting on them. You can always revert by the way as well so coming into this one that I've changed I can always click this button here which will revert to the new global setting same with this one. So if I click on this button click the little T icon there and then click revert and it's now going to put that at the global setting. So now these are all basically being controlled by that global setting. There's a couple of other things in here as well though if I open up those settings again. So first of all right up at the top here you've also got this one which says multi action show progress overlay. What that is is related to the actual buttons themselves you won't see it on the on the in the app but when I press one of these which is a multi action. You'll see that there's a little sort of check mark that appears on the screen which shows the progress of the multi action and when the multi action is complete it disappears off the screen. So that is something that is now optional. It always appeared before but now you can choose to take that off. So if you check on check show progress overlay then when you press the button there will be no little check mark that appears on the screen. So whether you want that or not you now have the option for it. You've also got here dials so you'll see dials this is relating specifically to the stream deck plus so the stream deck plus being the eight key plus the dials version of the stream deck. And now you can update the style of the text on the screen separately to the style of the button there as well. So here you can see we've got volume and we can change the color of that and click on OK. So now we've got a different I need to apply that as well. Now we've got a different style of the text on there. You can't actually change the size of that independently that is just limited to be that size. And then also you can choose whether even you want that to appear or not. So maybe you just want the icons themselves rather than the text. So clicking apply would get rid of that text. Although on the stream deck buttons I tend not to use text at all. I prefer to just have nice pictograms that relate to whatever it is. So I design my own icons. I've got a number of those available on my store which you can find a link to in the description as well. But for the actual dials I do find that useful because usually they contain a little bit more information. So if I put the titles back on there and just reset this to white for the time being click on apply. I use the dials on the stream deck plus for things like e-cam live which is what I'm using to make this video. And I want to actually see what I'm looking at because there is a feature of the dials where you can have what they call dial stacks. Which means that when you push the dial in it will actually switch through different functions that are being controlled by that button. So as you can see here I'm looking at my mic level in e-cam live. But if I click on this button here that actually changes to be the movie level in e-cam live. Click it again and then it is the system level. Click it again and it is the effects level. So these are all related to e-cam which is the software that I'm using to make this video. And then also for interview mode in e-cam live that I use for recording the podcast I can switch through different guest audio level. So for me having those titles on there is really useful because I want to be able to see exactly what that button is controlling. Because if I didn't have the title then as you can see the actual little pictograms underneath it are all exactly the same. So there will be no way of me knowing which was which. Now incidentally this sort of brings me onto these little button icons that I've got in the background there. Because what I found was whilst I like the fact that if I just swipe over here you can add a different background to this screen. So this is a little touch screen here and you can add a different background to it. When you then add in your buttons depending on how they're looking sometimes it was difficult to see the text or see the pictogram that was being used. And so I wanted to have something that was going to give a bit more contrast to each of those buttons. And so that's what I did. I created these little sort of as you can see little sort of blank button icons that then everything goes over the top of. And it's easy to add those into any action. So all you do is just click on here and in the same way that you can update the icon of a regular button in here you can also go to either set from file. Or actually the best way to do this I found was to create new background and then you drag and drop the image there. So what I've done is I've actually made these buttons available for free. So if you would like to add this kind of thing to your stream deck I've got a collection of over 60 of varying different colors basically to hopefully appeal to everybody's taste. So there's a series of just different colored icons here and I can now drag and drop any one of those into my stream deck plus. And if I come back over to the stream deck plus you'll see how this works click on apply. And now we've got this sort of more contrasting background that I think works better for that. So I've left a link to this down in the description but it's basically over on the take one tech store. So if you go to there and scroll down you'll see my other stream deck icon packs as well. And there is a cost associated with those but if you look down here the stream deck plus this is just a free icon packs. If you want to add those buttons to your stream deck plus to make things stand out a little bit more then go and check that out as I say link is in the description. So apart from the font section settings then that pretty much covers off that global settings tab that we've now got in the preferences. The other thing that has been added in is something called link action state titles which may have not been immediately obvious as to what it does to you or does for you. And what that is is when you have got an action on the stream deck there is for most of them just a single space that you can add a single graphic for your button and then also a single title in here. But there are some things where you have basically two different states for the button. One of those would be in ecum live if I go to here and run a scene basically this one it will show me when the scene is active versus when it's not. So when I switch to a different scene for example like this then the button will change state that as to in terms of what it's showing on the screen there. And down here you'll see then that you do have this these two little radio buttons here that you can switch from one to the next to show the sort of changing of the icon and you can update an icon for this one and then update for the other state as well. But you've also got then this title and previously the title was basically two different options. You could have a title for one state versus a title for another state and you still can do that. But if I go to here and I'll just in fact what I'll do is I'll change to an easy one to show this on which might be a hot key switch. So let's just use the basic hot key switch function that you've got on stream deck. So maybe it's a hot key to turn something on and a hot key to turn the thing off again. And here you can just click to assign those two hot keys. So let me say that this is just called switch for example just randomly there you can see it says switch. You'll also see that it's adopted that global font styling as well. But now if I switch to the other button it still says switch and this is because they've now added in this little link icon here which connects the two states. However if you do want to break this and have those two titles changing independently of each other you can just click on the little link icon there. And then what I might want to have is maybe this is saying that it's on and then if I click over to this one maybe this one says that it is off if I can spell a three letter word. So now you can see that when I switch back and forth between those and indeed when I press the button on my stream deck then it is going to be switching backwards and forwards between those two different titles. But once again if you want to link those you can just always click the little link button and then it will remain the same whichever state it's on. So that's just really that link action state title in the update list is just that basically. Now there were a couple of other fixes that came in with the update as well. So I'll just mention some of those because one of them specifically did apply to me. And that was the update which or the change which resolved a bug where updating a plug in would lead to basically a little question mark appearing on some of your actions. And certainly I found that with people I was on consultation calls with that they'd had an update or something. And so they'd wondered why all their buttons had changed to little question marks. And so that it seems has been fixed if that did affect you then then certainly that one has been has been fixed. So it's worth just double checking and updating your plugins once again. So there were a few other fixes in there. It's all in the release notes nothing sort of major in that respect as well. There is another one though that they mentioned which doesn't appear to be necessarily max specific. And that is the fact that open now applies to folders or rather there is a little action for it. And so maybe I should just explain that a little bit more because it's not actually a new feature it's just a slightly new implementation. But previously if you go into the system menu and drag in the open command here and it says app and file so it says it can open an app and file. It's always been able to open folders. So if you go to the little navigation thing here click on that it will just bring up your your finder or explore a window whether you're Mac or PC. And then you can select a file a folder or an application to either open an application open a file and obviously it will open the relevant application for that. Or opening a folder would open up the finder on Mac or Windows Explorer whatever they call it these days on the on the PC. So what the update said was that there was now a specific folder action in there. And this is what it says in the release notes. You'll see that now next to where it says sort of presentation in that little clip. Then there is not just a little file icon but there is also a little folder icon. However, I noticed that that wasn't actually present on the Mac update. So maybe that is just a window specific thing. But just know that you've always been able to do that and you can still do it just by clicking on here. If you want to Mac click on the little file icon there and then go and select the folder that you want to open. This kind of brings me on to another related function because this is all about the open command. The big one that I want to talk about is the close command and it is such a simple thing. But I'm a big proponent of using the stream deck as basically as I say the ultimate productivity tool and I use it for setting up like you know entire workflows or work states I should say. So when I'm getting ready to do something like filming this video or maybe it's working on some other aspects of business. Then I want it to basically be able to just press a button and it will just open up all of these different things that I'm going to work on. I then link it in with other software like Moom and Keyboard Maestro to position windows on the screen and do all sorts of other automation as well. But having the multi-action on a stream deck be the thing that is triggering all of these different things and specifically opening a lot of applications. So just in case you weren't aware that on the stream deck you can create multi-actions. So if I come into here, right click on this particular thing, just cancel this out, right click on here and go to create multi-action. Then it creates this space here where I can essentially open a whole load of different applications. So I could drag this on here, keep dragging these on. Maybe this one might be too open. One app, let's say this is going to open whatever it is, a browser. I'm not going to go through and select all the apps. This one might be to open another app, maybe my Excel file or Excel or something like that. This one could be to open a specific file. You can have it basically open a whole series of different things up for you and do other things. Trigger, do not disturb or whatever it happens to be from using keyboard shortcuts. You basically can build up a whole sequence of events in here that is just one single multi-action. So you press one button and it magically does all of this stuff. So it's great. However, the one lacking function that it's had up until now is yet you can open all this stuff. But what do you do when you want to finish? Or what do you do if you're switching from one state to another? You have to go through and annoyingly go and click close on so many different things. So now they've resolved that because as well as having an open action, we have now got a close action. And it's just below the open. Obviously, click on close. So you might want it to be for live streaming, for example. I might want it to close down things that I think are going to be using a bandwidth or things like that. So there is now this close function here. It works exactly the same way. You can just come to here and click on the little icon here to select a file, a folder or an application and have it close down those apps. One thing to note, though, is that if you are closing down apps that have maybe got unsaved work, it will trigger you to save the work. So there is a very dangerous work around to that, which is force quit. So you can have it literally just force quit certain applications. I'd be very wary of using that just from the case that I've just said there, which is that, yeah, if you've got any unsaved work and you force quit, then it's gone. So you have to be very careful about making sure that you are saved. But apart from that, I think that this is a great little addition. And as I say, I know that a lot of people who are using the stream deck largely for productivity like I am, this is going to just add to this ability to switch between one work frame and another. Now, this is something that I've talked about at length on my channel before, but just recently I talked about how I'm using all five of these stream decks that I've got my desk at the moment. Well, three on the desk, two on the floor, technically. And I talked all about that in a recent live stream. And you can find that video over here on the right hand side. And I talk all about how I'm using them for productivity specifically.