 In this video, I'm going to give you an introduction to the loop deck so that you can understand how it can help you be more productive on your Mac, or indeed PC, although I will be looking more at the Mac side of things. Now, if you are just interested in the loop deck, then consider this, as I say, an overview of the product. If you already have a loop deck, then this is actually the first in a series of videos, a beginner's guide to loop deck that's going to take you all the way through from taking it out of the box to actually having it up and running and having it set up for your whole productivity needs and understanding how best to go about doing that. So I'll leave a link to all of the other videos in the series in the description, but first of all, what is it we're actually talking about? Well, here it is, this is the loop deck. It is essentially an input device for your computer. So it's got a series of buttons, a few dials on the side here as well. These are sort of fixed buttons on the device itself that you press, just like that. They are numbered with an icon here and then numbers one to seven. This is the home button. I'll come to that in due course and explain how to use all of these different things. Then we've got the dials that I mentioned previously. There is three on either side. They do stick out from the device itself. They are sort of ratcheted. So you do have a slight sort of click to them and they move in a sort of incremental fashion. And then also you can push those in and out as well. So pushing that in will activate something. Then we've got these 12 keys in the middle. Now this is actually one large touchscreen. So we've got a large touchscreen here and you'll notice that it's essentially 12 buttons in the middle, but we've got these strips down either side. Now I'll come to that in a moment, but one thing to point out is that although it is a flat touchscreen and there is no sort of movement on it in terms of when you push the key in, it doesn't actually clunk or anything like that. It's not a physical button, but it is a touchscreen. There is some haptic feedback. I'll come to that in due course as well. But the whole screen does have these sort of dividers. So there is this kind of like plastic laid over the top of it that does sort of separate out these buttons. So you do get some sort of tactile feel as to exactly where you are pressing on the device itself. Now all of these buttons are essentially programmable. And when I say programmable, you're not gonna get into any coding or anything like that. There is a user interface where you're basically just gonna apply all of the different actions and things like that that you want. And obviously I'll be covering all of that in a little moment as well. But you're not actually limited to just the number of keys that you've got here. Because there are ways that you can basically create little groups of keys for different actions, for different applications, rather I should say that you're gonna use this for. And also for each of those sort of groupings, if you like, you can also add multiple pages of actions as well. So here we've got 12 on this screen, but with a little swipe across the screen, it's swiped over to another whole page of actions. So with this thing sitting on your desk, you can really sort of have a lot of buttons just at the touch of a fingertip or maybe a quick swipe over to another page and a touch over there. So you can do pretty much anything, well you can do anything that you could do with a keyboard shortcut on a Mac or a PC because you could just simply assign that particular keyboard shortcut to the device. But there are also some other more complex things you can do by creating macros where you're basically adding multiple different actions together. And we'll be covering exactly how to do all of that in this series of videos. Now just in terms of the size of it, I'll show you relative to a regular keyboard. There you can see how large it is if I have it fitting into the screen. It's just not quite as deep if you like as a regular keyboard with the function keys at the top. I'll just pop this little thing off at the back. That shows you it's basically like the height of the number keys plus the letter keys. And in terms of the width, well it's probably about half the width of a regular keyboard, maybe a little bit more than half of the width. And in terms of the depth, it's pretty slim actually, not too fat there. Obviously the dials do stick out. It's connected over USB. There's a USB-C connector on the back, USB-C on the other end of the cable, but it comes with an adapter to plug into a regular USB-3 as well. The device can sit just flat on the desk or wherever you wanna put it. It does also come with this little kickstand as well. Not kickstand, it is either it's fitted or it's not. And it just clips in at the back just like that. Normally I'm not a fan of these kind of little sort of flimsy plastic additions, but actually its simplicity makes it feel quite rigid somehow. So I was a bit surprised at that. And actually it means that it's really easy to just pop on and off. You just pop it off like that and then pop it back on. So in terms of actually taking it if you are traveling or anything like that, it's really easy to just literally, you know, do that and pop it into your bag. And it does feel like, I mean, I haven't really thrown it around as such, but I've certainly carried it in a bag or two and it does just easily sort of pop in and you don't sort of really worry about taking it on the road. The overall quality of it, it's a sort of, it's a plastic finish. The dials feel like metal, but it still feels pretty solid. And as I say, all of the actual moving parts, the dials, the buttons, things like that feel pretty solid. Now, if you are interested in a loop deck, I'm gonna make a little guess here. I'm gonna guess that you've heard about the Stream Deck as well. So I will be doing a full head-to-head comparison of the two devices, but I should just sort of compare it to the Stream Deck since we are talking about them. And as I say, I'm guessing that if you've heard of this one, you've heard of the Stream Deck 2. The Stream Deck's been out for a little while longer. And this is the Stream Deck XL, which is the 32 key version. And that there is one of the differences. The Stream Deck is literally, there are three sizes and they are differentiated by the number of keys they've got. So there's either the 32 key, there is a 15 key or there is a six key version. There are different versions of the Loop Deck and I'll come onto those in a moment. But the thing about the Loop Deck is it does have these extra features of these dials here. And obviously it is touch screen, but that doesn't affect the actual functionality. You can still change the icons on the Stream Deck just as you can in the Loop Deck. But where it comes to size, the Stream Deck just feels like a much bigger lump of a thing really. I'm not really showing it too well here. Let me turn it on its side because that's where the sort of bulk of the Stream Deck really shows itself. So there you can see the thickness of the Stream Deck compared to the Loop Deck. The Loop Deck does just look tiny. Not very good, a sort of black device on a black dark colored desk here really is it. But you can see there, I mean, even without that stand on the back, which is removable on the Stream Deck, it's still a pretty fat device there to have sitting on the desk. And certainly it's not quite the same of, you know, feeling of, oh, I'll just throw it into my backpack or messenger bag or whatever it is carrying it with your laptop. Whereas this certainly feels like it's got that portability factor with it. I mean, that said, with lockdown and whatever's been going on over the past two years, generally I haven't really moved far from my desk. But nevertheless, it is just interesting to note that sort of difference in size. And in weight as well, this is definitely a much lighter device, but without feeling, you know, it still feels solid. So I don't want to give the impression that it feels light and cheap. It feels that still feels solid and just nicely light. And yet when it's on the desk with the little kickstand, it doesn't really slide around too much. And you certainly don't have any issues sort of pressing it, feeling it's too light under the fingers or anything like that. So as I say, that is just to give a comparison of the size. It's not quite as wide, not quite as deep and certainly a fraction of the thickness of it. So this is, as I say, the Loupedeck Live. Let's have a little look though at the other devices in the Loupedeck range. And in fact, where the Loupedeck started was a rather different looking device. And this one is still available. This is the Loupedeck Plus. And this is coming from its, really its heritage as a device to be used as a companion for photo editing. So you'll see on here, we've got some different things related to photo editing. By the way, all of these keys on here are basically sort of fixed use. You can change the, I should say, I should rephrase that. You can change the things that these are controlling but there's no icons on here to change or anything like that. They've just literally got dials here for contrast, exposure, clarity. So you can see the heritage of what this is intended for here because of all of these devices, because of all these labels, I should say, on the device. You've got these little sliders here, these little wheels to control various different things. These are programmable. But yeah, it's really coming from this, as I say, heritage of being used for photo and video editing. The Stream Deck on the other hand is coming from a sort of live streaming heritage. So being able to control lots of different things on your live stream originally. And so both now have sort of become, I would say, more general productivity tools. And so the Loop Deck last year, end of last year released this new model which is the Loop Deck Live. This is the one that I was just showing you that I've got that we're talking through today. But then we've also got the Loop Deck CT. And this is basically still retaining some of that photo editing, video editing heritage because we've got this large wheel down at the bottom. And you'll see as we start to look at the device and programming the device, there is this real sort of slant towards the creativity apps, editing apps and those sorts of things. So this is the Loop Deck Live, as I say. And if you take a look at all of the things that we've got on this device, you'll notice that the Loop Deck CT basically just looks like a Loop Deck Live over on the top here. Exactly the same functions we've just looked at. But then down at the bottom, we've got this extra large wheel. I can imagine that for skipping through the timeline of a video or something like that or adjusting levels, whatever it happens to be. And then you've got some additional buttons here that are programmable too. But again, just fixed text on those buttons rather than them having icons that you can change. So that is the two devices. So what we're gonna be looking at in this series of videos is how to program this. And really it is how to program these two devices. So these two rather than the Loop Deck Plus which is a different kind of device really. And one thing I should also say is if I come just down to this shot, just one second, there we go. Losing my buttons for a minute is that whilst we have different sets of actions on here so I can just sort of swipe through and see various different buttons on here, we also have these dials on the side. And I mentioned that there are these little touch screens down on the side here as well. Well, as well as having different sort of pages of icons that we can have on the device itself, we can also have different, they still call them pages of actions for these dials as well. So if I swipe on here, then it brings up a completely different set of actions for the dial. And you can see here that next to each of these dials is the little icon that's showing you what those things are for. So in this case, this is volume, media track control and web scroll. And then if I do like that, then this has now changed the function of these. So as well as having multiple pages of buttons, we can also have multiple pages of the dial actions as well. So that is the sort of the overview of the device. And why might you use this, I should say, rather than just using keyboard shortcuts and things like that on the computer? Well, sometimes if you're using keyboard shortcuts and if you're familiar with them, I still use keyboard shortcuts extensively. And if I have got my hands on the keyboard and I am typing, then it's very easy to just do all manner of keyboard shortcuts. But if you're doing something like editing or something like that where you've got one hand on the mouse, suddenly you are then really quite restricted on the keyboard shortcuts that are easy to do on your computer. And so I often find that having my hand sort of on this device or my stream deck or I've got another one for 3D modeling when I'm doing architectural work, which is another device for my left hand to sit on whilst I am also using the mouse with the other hand. So there is a real sort of benefit to having a dedicated device where you can add all of your different shortcuts and actions and things like that. So that is a little summary of the device itself. Let's have a little look though now at the actual application and how we are going to actually program this. I should say if you have already had a look deck for a while, maybe you've just not really had time to get into it or get it set up or anything like that, then do definitely go and check for the latest software update. I mentioned this because there was a new update at the time of filming just yesterday. So we are on version 5.1 now. And there was a couple of large updates that came to the way the application works. So definitely go and check out that. I'll leave a link in the description, but it is lukedeck.com slash get hyphen started. That is always going to be the place where you can go to get the latest software. So definitely make sure you have got the latest version of the software on your computer. So coming over to the software itself though, this is what it looks like when you open it up on your computer. This is where we are going to control the device or rather I should say program the device with all the actions that we want it to have. Now if you've seen stream deck, then this will look somewhat similar because it's got a similar sort of effect here where we've got a basically a graphical representation of the device itself. So this is the lukedeck live. If you did have the lukedeck CT, you would also see the picture of that device as well, but we're going to stick with the lukedeck live. And basically it's showing you all of the different buttons that you've got on here, all the different images that we can have on the screen or the different actions and so on. So this is basically, as I say, just the area where we're going to be showing what we are putting on the device. How do we get stuff on the device? Well, that's done through this section over here on the right hand side. This is where we're going to find all of the different actions and things like that that we could possibly want to do and also how we can program our own as well. In terms of the actual programming, it is just a case of drag and drop. So if I come over to a blank space, there are different actions down here. I'll be going through this in detail and talking all about this, but basically it's just a case of dragging and dropping just like that. So that's the area where we're going to find the actions that we want. And then when we want to activate that, we've now then got that on our device. And just to show you that whatever we're doing on here is actually being replicated on the device itself. So there is that button that I've just added into the desktop app is now already there on the device and ready to use. I should just say, I probably should have just mentioned this a little bit sooner, when you do install the application on the Mac, there is one little thing that it'll ask you to do, which is go into your security and privacy settings. It will prompt you to do this and talk you through exactly where you need to go. But it is going to ask you to give access to certain areas of the Mac's operating system. And that's because you're going to basically use this as an input device to control various different things on your Mac. So it will ask you to give access to things like the accessibility section. It's going to ask for full disk access because there are things on here where you can access certain files and folders and so on. So it will need those access to those areas too. And it will also ask for an automation access as well. So if you're familiar with the Mac, then you'll know what this area is, security and privacy in your system preferences. This is where we're just basically granting it the permissions that it needs in order to do the job that we're going to be asking it to do. So just so that you know to expect that. And if you notice that when you come through to the installation part, that it is nothing out of the ordinary and to just go ahead and grant it those permissions. There's a couple of other things that you might want to have a look at because this is as I say, the area where we're going to program it. I'm going to cover this in detail a little bit later. This area up at the top is also where we're going to choose profiles and workspaces. Don't worry about the terminology there. I'll cover off all of that is, what all of that is. But basically these are different use cases that we're going to have for the device. So you can decide whether you want it to basically change what is on the screen based on the application that you're using or whether you want to build out something yourself from scratch where it's just going to be exactly what you want to have on it at any given time. I'll talk about the differences there. So that's what these things are up here. We'll be talking about that a little bit later. We've also here, this was the big addition to the new version of the software. We've got the loop deck marketplace. And if you click on this, it'll actually open up a completely separate window which is where we can get access to different profiles. Those are, as I say, these ways of basically having specific use cases based on the application that you're using. There's also plugins, which are ways to actually have groups of actions that are for specific use cases or specific applications as well. And then we've got icon packs because one of the great things about the loop deck as with the stream deck, you can actually change the icons that you have on the screen so that rather than just having any text on there, you will actually have a little graphic representation so you'll know what the button does. And so in the new loop deck marketplace, you can actually download entire icon packs to help with making your loop deck look pretty. So as I say, that was one of the latest additions to the software that you can find up here. Then there is a couple of settings though that I wanna draw your attention to. So in the little icon up here, you will be prompted, by the way, if you want to go and create a loop deck account. And so in here, you will have access to go and sign in, sign out and change some account settings and things like that. Useful to have this because it will then send you updates or send you notifications of updates and news and things like that. So I have created an account there. But we have also then got this device settings option here. So clicking in the device settings, you may want to, if you've had a loop deck for a while and haven't used it or you haven't used it in a while, haven't checked in a while, then just come down to the device configuration in the device settings and just come to the firmware update section just to check that you have got the latest version. It'll tell you if it's up to date or not. So you may want to just update the firmware, the firmware being the sort of controlling, coding if you like on the device itself as opposed to the software which is on your computer. So just check that that is on. Or I should say, check that that is up to date. One that will be on by default is this vibration. Now this is where I mentioned earlier about there being some form of sort of haptic feedback. And basically this is that when you press on the touch screen, it's gonna have this little sort of vibration, a bit like you have a vibration alert on a mobile phone to sort of let you know if somebody's ringing as an option to have that on or off. You also have that option on here as well. Personally, I don't really like this function. The, I find that it's quite intrusive in terms of a, from a noise point of view, given that I am using this primarily for recording and things like that. So it can be quite loud, especially when it's sitting on the desk, then the sound does seem to transmit. So I personally want that one off. I also find that, you know, I guess the reason for having it is to give you that haptic feedback that you are actually pressing a touch screen button. But I'm gonna actually see if I've pressed something and something's happened, I will actually see it happening. So I've just personally decided that I want that off. So if you do also want that off, then this is where you'll do it in, as I say, the settings and then the device configuration. Scroll down to the bottom. So this has got a little scroll at the side and then just turn off this vibration wave form. That is where to turn that off. There's another option that is switched on by default, which is that whenever you trigger an action, it has a little pop-up on the screen that actually tells you what it's just done. And that is another thing that I don't particularly find useful myself. I don't want something popping up on the screen to tell me that it's done what I've asked it to do at a precise time that I've asked it to do it. So that can be turned off though. And that is not necessarily obvious where that would be. It is in these global settings here, you've got this thing that says overlay and it doesn't really give you much information about what that is, but that is what that is. The overlay is the overlay enabled. So if that was toggled on, basically, as I say, every time you press a button, it would just have a little pop-up on your screen that tells you the action that it's just triggered. So if that is something you want to turn off, that is where you'll find it in overlay. And I say, I just mentioned this because it isn't immediately obvious where that would be. The account section in here, by the way, in the global settings, this is for you to link it to, there's a few different services that you can actually link it with. So link it with your Spotify account, Twitch or Philips Hue to allow you to control those services and devices from the loop deck. So if you did want to go in and add those in, that is where you would do it. The analytics is just basically to decide whether you want to share your usage data with loop deck for feedback and obviously improvement process, their improvement process. So that's something that I've done there. So that is an overview of the settings. And so we've also looked at here just very briefly. I'll just go through this sort of area here just very quickly as well. So the plugins are basically different groupings of actions. So this is where we can flick through and you'll notice that as I flick through these, it changes what is being shown down here. So this is where we're gonna choose our different sort of groupings of actions that we want to do, that we want to pick from to use in here. And then down in this area, you can see that they are basically then subdivided then into folders of different actions. There are a couple of different kinds of actions in here. So if I come down here, for example, you can see that we've got some of them where they have got this little symbol here, which looks like, it's supposed to look like a finger pushing a button. So those are actions that we can assign to any of the buttons on the screen or these buttons down here. And then we've also got some here that are sort of rotating and those are for anything that we can assign to these rotating buttons here. I'll dig into this in a little bit more detail a little bit later. But before we start throwing buttons all over the place and assigning actions, what we need to do is we need to decide how we're going to start to organize this because as you can see, there is a huge potential for lots of things that you can do with it. And you do need to make sure that you are actually organized with it. And so the way that we're going to organize this or the way that you need to think about organizing this is through the use of profiles. And profiles are a way to basically think about these as different use cases that you may have and different sort of groupings of all of the actions. Now I'm going to be talking about profiles in the video that's coming right up now. And so this is where we're going to start to actually build out our look deck.