 If you are new to Stream Deck, or maybe you're already a Stream Deck user and want to know how to get the most out of it, maybe you feel like you haven't been using it to its full potential, well, if so, then this Beginner's Guide to Stream Deck is for you. I'm gonna run through all of the setup steps you need to make to actually start getting Stream Deck working for you. Hello, and welcome to Take One Tech. My name's Alec, and this is the second in a series of videos I'm doing all about Stream Deck, and I intend this to be a sort of total beginner through to expert level training on how to get the most out of Stream Deck. And as I say, this is the second video. If you are totally new and still don't even know what Stream Deck is, don't worry, I made a video all about that, and I'll post a link to it up in the top corner, which will give you more of an introduction. But this is intended to be a continuation of that video, so I will continue where we left off. And let me go straight over to my Stream Deck. I won't cover the same ground as we did in the last video, but just to recap where we are, then if he presses the right button on his Stream Deck. So this is my Stream Deck XL. I explained all about the different models that are available, and I'll also do a full review of the Stream Deck XL, so I'll leave a link to that when I get round to it in a day or two. But here we have my Stream Deck XL with all of my buttons. These are the buttons that I'm using to control ECAM Live at the moment, and as you can see, but in this particular view here, and these are mimicked on the Stream Deck application. So if I come back over to the Stream Deck application, if you watched the last video, this should look familiar because this is exactly where I left off from it. So what I'm gonna do is rather than start with a completely built out Stream Deck instance, I'd rather start with a fresh slate so we can actually build something from scratch, and you can see exactly how we do that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually switch to one of my other devices. So I've got it on my phone as well. I did mention about how you can run Stream Deck on a mobile using the mobile app, which is on a subscription basis. So that's another option if you don't want to actually have to buy the hardware device. It's also handy if you're on the road, by the way. So I use this sometimes if I'm out and about and I've got my laptop with me, then I can be in a coffee shop and still have some of that Stream Deck goodness with me just on my mobile phone. So it is a great addition even if you've got the hardware device as well. And then you can copy actions over from your Stream Deck hardware device over to your mobile devices as well. But I'll come to that in another video. I'll probably do a whole video specifically about how I'm using the mobile app. So here we have a blank instance. Now, if you had gone for the sort of intermediate level one or the intermediate size one, I should say, they were all just as good in terms of the performance. So this is the 15 key one would look exactly like this and that's how many keys you got on the mobile version. So let's just say you've just installed it and it looks something like this. We can add all sorts of actions. And as I mentioned in the very first introduction, these can be things like keystrokes. So you can mimic keystrokes in any application that you're in or you could have it perform specific actions or macros or things like that. Now, one thing you might think is that 15 keys is more than enough. You'll never need more than that. Well, personally, I quickly run out of keys. And when you do that, you need to basically have a way to run more than a number of keys that are on your screen. There is a way that you can add folders to Stream Deck so that you can add different actions within that. And that seems like to a lot of people, me included, a logical way to go. You could have like a series of folders linking to all sorts of different sets of actions. And coming from a maybe more traditional background, then files and folders seems like a logical way to go. But I would advise you to use folders sparingly. There is a much better way to do it. And I covered this in a video that I did recently about why I prefer to use profiles over folders. And so I'll leave a link to that video up above. But that is the sort of method, the profile method is the way that I'm gonna suggest here and the way that I'm gonna sort of teach in this guide as well. So when we're thinking about the Stream Deck, if we anticipate, which you probably will, that you're gonna need to have more icons than you can fit on one screen, what I would recommend is that you have one profile, one screen that is kind of like your home screen. And from there, you can navigate by pressing a button to any of your other screens. And the way that I would recommend setting this up from the outset is what you've got here is at the moment we've got the name of the device and then underneath it, it tells us the profile. The profile is just this sort of view if you like and within you have multiple different profiles and each profile can have a range of different buttons. So what I would recommend is if you come into Edit Profiles, one thing to bear in mind by the way is that you don't necessarily have to think about all of this in advance and think about every button that you're gonna need and plan it all out and program them all from the outset, that can be a little bit overwhelming. Possibly it might be a better approach to just have the stream deck on your desk if you've felt, have ever felt daunted by it, then have it on your desk and start going about your day-to-day business. And when you notice that there are tasks that you're performing repeatedly or things that could be assigned to a button having watched this video, then just go through and build it up slowly. It doesn't have to be something that you plan everything out meticulously from the outset. It can be a more fluid experience where you just sort of adding things in as and when they occur to you. And that's probably a better way to commit things to memory. I'm the opposite of that. I'm a little bit OCD about things. And I did obviously go down the, let me plan out every button I'm gonna need, let me make out all the icons, let me program them all in and get it done. But that is a bit of a niche approach, I think. So don't be put off by having to do all of this from the outset. You can build it up as you go along. But when you come into the edit profiles, this will bring you back into that screen I showed you in the preferences in the previous video. And here, as you can see, now that we've changed to this different device, we've got a completely blank set of profiles. So the profiles are listed down this side and then this is some other actions that you can see when we select a profile. So I would recommend creating a home screen. And so for that, let us click on this. We could actually just change the name of this one. Let us just change that to a home. So just double-click in there and now we've got our home profile. When you click on a profile, you can also toggle this to make this your default profile. So I would recommend doing that so that home is always your default profile. And if you go into any application that hasn't been assigned to a profile, which we'll talk about later, then it will always revert back to this one. That's like your home screen then. Then we can think about some of the different use cases that you may have. So you may be using this for, let's say, work. You may be using it for research or for play, for recording on eCAM Live or for whatever it happens to be. So if you think about those sorts of mindsets, then let's say personally, I use Excel quite heavily. So I'll have a set of controls that I use for Excel. So I might create a profile called Excel. Okay, and you can have profiles for every different thing. And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna show you here. In fact, let me just call this one demo for now and you'll see why in a moment. So if I come back into my profiles here or into my Streamdeck application, so at the moment we are in, if I change this to demo and then it should be able to let me change back to default profile. And it doesn't change the name of that one. I see. One second. Don't you just love it when demos don't go right? I thought I had changed that to home. Maybe, there we go, that's better. I thought I did that. Did I do that? Am I going crazy? I don't know. But anyway, so that is our home profile. So now it has actually updated it on here. Maybe I didn't press return or something. So this is our home profile and then this one is our demo profile. And actually, when you create a new profile, it does put this little welcome button in and that welcome button basically is just a link to go to a URL. But I'll show you how to link to websites a little bit later. But for now, it does quite nicely differentiate between the two profiles. So what we want to be able to do is from our home profile, we want to be able to get to this new profile. So what we'll do is in the right hand side, this is where we add on different actions. And so it's a good way to start because I can show you how to simply add on actions to your stream deck. You simply come down to the list on the right hand side and there's all these different sort of groupings of different actions, but we're going to open the stream deck actions and we'll come down here and we want to use this one, which is switch profile. So if I drag this across to here, let's I'll put it there. And then the way that we change the action that's going to actually happen is we come down here, you can see that it's highlighted in green and then we'll come down here and it says, what is the profile that it's going to? So down here, it says next profile. Well, we want to be a bit more specific. I'm going to change this one to demo. And then when we give that one a title, let me just call that demo. So that goes to our little demo profile. And then when I'm, if I was to press that button on my mobile, then it would switch to the demo profile. And now we would want to be able to get back to the home profile. So if I drag the switch profile here, and then in this one, I'm going to put this one to go back to home. So now I can basically flick between those two profiles. I can press this button and it will go back to my home or I can press this button and it'll go back to my demo profile. Now there may be some things that you want to have on each screen. So that would be an example. If I go back to my demo, basically every new profile that I create, I always want to be able to get back to the home profile. So this is almost like a sort of template for it. If I just delete this one now, I always want to have this little home button. Now let me just come and see if I can quickly grab a little icon. Now you can just, if you've got an image on your computer, you can just drag that over the little icon here and it will change. But there is actually a way you can get icons built into Stream Deck. And so I'll just show you that one. If you click on the little plus icon, it will open up the Stream Deck library. Now I'll show you how you can add more icons to this. But basically this will open up a sort of list of different icons that are available. And they have got quite a big range, but when you start getting into some more niche applications, then you might not be able to find anything that exactly suits the bill. But let me just have a little look. I'll cover different ways that you can get new icons. But let me just see if I can quickly pull something that looks a little bit like a home button, perhaps one second, he says. As you can see, I'm scrolling through icons. And I also did a video about how you can make your own icons using Keynote. So I'll leave a link to that video down in the description as well, because that is a great way that you can actually make custom icons exactly as you want them to be. And I'm still scrolling and I'm looking for something that will fit the bill rather quickly, one second. You can spend a lot of time searching for icons. So I tend to just make my own. And as I say, it's quite easy in Keynote. So let me just pick one of these at random because I'm still not finding a home button that looks like a home button, one second. Well, there we go, I've run out of ideas. I'm just gonna use that one. I'm not sure that that really is a home button, but there you go. I just want to have it to differentiate between the different screens we're on. So that is now our icon for our home button. And if I go back into my home screen, so now I've got my demo profile and then I've got my demo profile with that little home button in it. Well, we could have that as literally our little template for all of the other profiles that we make because we're always going to want that little home button in the corner. So the way that I would recommend doing it is just create one profile with all of the buttons that you have that you want to use on any profile. Let me just give you another example. If we go into the system tools, one of the options that you have there is to add a multimedia button. So you can drag that on and within the multimedia button, you've got things like change track, play, pause music or volume up and down. So maybe if you're somebody who listens to music a lot while you're working or on your computer in general, then you could just add these multimedia controls in here and then you could have that one as play, pause. Maybe this one you might have for increase volume and this one would be decrease volume like that. So now we've got these set of controls. So let's just say that you always wanted to have access to those. You could keep those in this sort of little template file that we're creating here and I'll go back into my edit profiles. So now I can create those other profiles for those other applications I use. So all I'm going to do here is if you right click on a profile, you can click on duplicate. And so let's say that I'm going to make a few copies of this because that is basically our base profile that we've got those few actions. We always want to be able to get home and control our volume and so on. So we're going to leave those in each one. You don't have to do that. It's up to you. I'm just showing you how you can duplicate things with actions in. So let's say that this one is going to be, I'll use the example I used before. I use Excel quite a lot. So I'm going to have Excel. Maybe you have one for research. So you're doing a lot of research for one thing and another and you have a sort of mind frame for that where you have certain actions and applications that you need. Maybe you have one for music production. Who knows, whatever it is. So basically have a think about the sort of mind frames that you're in and the different actions that you might want for each one. Let's put one more. Let's just call this general work. So there we go. I think I've got enough there just to demonstrate the point. So by the way, you can also add blank profiles by clicking the little plus icon at the bottom. And as you just saw, if you highlight one, you can actually press the minus to open it there as well to delete it there as well. I'll come on to these settings in a little while. But for now, if I come back to my actual screen and I'll go back to my home. So now you can see I've got my home screen and I've linked to my demo screen or my demo profile. Well, now let's say I'm going to add to those other ones. So we come back up into the stream deck actions and we've got this switch profile. So I can just drag a few of those on. And I'm going to have this one. I'll call this one Excel. And then I'll choose the profile. It's going to be my Excel profile. You can add icons obviously to all of these to make them pretty, but we'll come on to that a little bit later. This one is going to be my research one. And then this one is going to be music production, whatever it might be. I'm not a music producer myself. I wish I was, but there you go. And in fact, let's take this one out of demo now because you don't need to demonstrate it. We're actually getting on into the works. I'll put that one as work now. So there you can see that we've got a little home screen set up and then we've got buttons to switch between the different profiles and the different use cases that we have for our stream deck. So as I say, I would recommend that as a first step just so that then you've got a series of profiles, blank spaces for you to start building out all of your actions. Again, if you think you're going to need more than one screen. Now, just while I've got this up, you'll notice that I've added a title in for each of these actions and it has appeared in the icon itself. So you can change the icon, what the picture that is in the background as you saw me just do a moment ago. So this one, I can either create a new icon set file or choose from the stream deck library. I'll come onto the stream deck library a bit later. In fact, the video that I did all about version five talks about all of that. So what I'll do is I'll link to that video because that explains exactly how you access the stream deck library where you can get icons and stock music and things like that. The stock music is not very good. That's just my opinion. I would rather use something like Epidemic Sound to get much better quality music and sound effects in there. But nevertheless, as I say, I'll leave a link to the video that I did about that. So we've got the text on. So you can change the image that forms the icon but then also you have this title. So every button has a title and that appears on there as well. But you have got some control over that. So you can click this little T button next to it, the little drop down, and you can choose whether you want to show that. So that title, if you can see this one here, if I toggle this, the word work disappears from the actual button. You can also change the position of the text on the button. Personally, I always prefer to actually have icons that are designed so that I know what they are without needing any text. So my stream tends to not have text on it really. But I would always still recommend, even if you aren't going to show a title, I'd always recommend writing the title in just so that you know exactly what the button is doing and it just makes it a lot clearer there. You can also change the font. You don't have access to full range of system fonts but there are some built-in fonts there that you can choose and then adjust the size as well. Then you can do things like bold underline and so on. And finally, change the color of the text but like I say, I tend to just have these off. I'll leave them on for the moment so that we can see what we're working with. So that is basically what I'd recommend as the first step in setting up your stream deck. Setting up a series of profiles to use to build out. Now let me just quickly flip back to mine. I don't want to battle or overwhelm you with this version but this is basically what I've done here. So this is my home screen. But press the little home button. This is my home screen. And then each one of these in the middle two rows is basically a link to my other profile. So I have these, how many is it? 16 different profiles that I can link to from my home screen. You can create a lot more profiles than that. But these are the ones that I'm linked to from my home screen. So this is the exact same process that I've gone through showing you that I've just shown you on this little dummy installation. So here we can come to, by dummy, I don't mean, I don't mean it's for dummies. I mean, it's my little demo installation. So if I come into my work one, so let's say we're going to build out my little work installation, work profile. As you can see, because we duplicated it, we've still got that little home link to get back to our home screen. And we've got these ones that we always want on every page. We want to be able to control our volume and press play and pause again. You might not want to do that, but again, I'm just showing you what is possible. So let's now have a look at some of these actions. We've looked at the stream deck actions and specifically the switch profile. I'm actually going to leave the rest of these and I'll come back to them a little bit later because these are getting into sometimes slightly more advanced stuff, but I did want to just show you where that switch profile was. As you can see, you can open and collapse this little collection of buttons. And we've also got the system buttons, which is one of the main ones that you'll find you'll be using. And then we've also got these other buttons for different applications and different uses. You may not have all of these showing up, but you can access different plugins which add in these buttons through the store. But again, that is covered in my other video, so I'll leave a link to that video in the description about the software version 5.0 update and how it integrated all of that into this one single place. However, one thing that you may want to just note is you do have this little button up at the top here that looks like, I suppose it looks like, three bullet points. And if you click on that, then what you can do there is you can actually rearrange the order of your buttons. So if you want to have them in a specific order, you can move them around like that, just grab on these things and you can drag and drop them to wherever you want them. And you can also choose whether you want the icon sets to be displayed. So as I say, you can download plugins and add them in that way. But if you've got stuff that is in there and you just don't want it showing up, like I quickly got rid of my OBS Studio buttons, then you can just toggle them on and off there. And so when you do that, then they just won't show up in this list. But let's come into the system buttons that we've got. So here I'm gonna show you what you can do with these. So the first one in the list is a website. So if I drag this across to here and drop it on there, and then he says, going back to his Stream Deck profile, you can drop that on there. And then what I'll do is I'll just come to here and we can add it in a URL. And so I'll just put a URL in there. So let's say the Apple website. You could be going to any website. It doesn't have to be Apple, but that's just an example. And then I could give this a title. If I could spell Apple right, it is a very tricky word after all. And now when I click on that button, it will just simply open the Apple website in a browser. And if the browser isn't open, then it will open up a new window and open it up there. If you've got a browser window open already, then it would open it in a new tab. Or if you'd already got the Apple website open in a tab already, it would switch to that particular tab. Now this is a good little feature. If you have websites that you visit frequently and you just want to be able to get to them quickly with a quick touch of a button, maybe checking your morning news or something like that, then you can simply add in a button for the website and it will just jump straight to it. So perhaps maybe if you're in your little research tab, if you do research, then you might have a series of research websites that you go to regularly and you could sort of line those all up to be able to open them all. We'll come on to multi-actions in a little while because that's where it gets really interesting. But for the moment, that is how you use the URL function. There is a thing here, get request in the background. That's maybe a little bit more advanced, but some URLs you can have where you have a string to actually fetch some data. So you can have it so that when you press the button it is actually fetching some data rather than just opening a website. But I won't get into that in this little tutorial. The next one down, I'm gonna actually skip and I'll come to in a moment. The one after that is called a hotkey. And that is basically like the example I gave you right back in the introduction of say doing command C for copy or command V for paste. If you wanted to create a copy and paste key, then you could have this one here and you could press to assign keystroke. And so when you click in that to click to assign keystroke, if I just press command C then it's recorded that. And that is now a copy button. So if ever I was in an application and I press that button, it's gonna simulate the keystroke command C, which is copy. And I might want to just retitle that. So as a default, it puts in for the title the actual keystrokes, so command C, but I might want to just retitle that as copy instead, like that. So now I've got myself a copy button and I suppose it would probably be a bit rude not to have a paste button as well, wouldn't it? So maybe if I come to here and I just add in another hotkey and then I'll click to assign button and I'm gonna do command V and then let's change that one to paste. So now I've just created a copy and paste button on my stream deck and this will work in any application that you have open. So it will just simulate that particular key. Now one thing to bear in mind is that if you use an application regularly and you are performing menu bar actions, so by that I mean coming up to the menu bar and you have, for example, in the file, so we're in Finder at the moment. So file new window, new folder, open, close, save, whatever it happens to be. If you do these things from the menu, then you'll notice next to these items, it always tells you where there is a shortcut available, what the shortcut keystrokes are. So when you are in applications that you're using frequently and you might want to get this into your sort of mind frame of thinking, well, maybe there's a stream deck button I could use to that, it's exactly the same as thinking maybe there's a keyboard shortcut for that. So anything that you can do with keyboard shortcuts, you can simply program it into your stream deck, as I've just shown you with that copy paste example. So just have a look in the menu here and see what the particular keyboard shortcut is for that action, and then you can program that into your stream deck. Incidentally, if ever there is something where you don't have a particular keyboard shortcut available, you can create custom keyboard shortcuts actually through the Apple system preferences. It's a little bit more tricky, it's not that tricky, but it's a little bit more tricky. But there is an easier way and I did a video surprisingly enough all about that because there is a free application that you can get called custom shortcuts and it makes it really easy to create custom shortcuts for anything that you have in your menus. So I'll leave a link to that one as well. If as you're going through your day, you're finding you're doing things from menu items, then just bear in mind that that can all be done with stream deck and that's probably a great way to sort of slowly build it all out. So that was how to add in a hotkey. Now, a hotkey switch which appears above it in the menu is basically a very similar thing, but it's where you are basically toggling between two states and what you'll notice is that you have this little icon and instead of it just being a single picture, this particular switch here has these two different states and it can either be an on or an off switch. Now, there are quite a lot of different ways that you might use this and it's very specific to applications. Let me just think of an example. So one way that I use this is I use a 3D modeling package for creating well, for architectural plans and drawings and things like that and architectural models. And in that application, I have the option to turn on or off perspective so that when I'm looking at the model, I'm actually seeing it either with perspective or more of a sort of ISO non-perspective view. And so I have a button to toggle that on and off. And so all you do is instead of having one hotkey in that particular application, it's command P is turn on and off perspective and I can use the same one in there. So when I press that, toggling on and off, it will actually switch between the two states and I will see visually which state it's in because the switch will either be on or off. And just notice that there is a separate hotkey for the two different states. So it doesn't, although in that particular example I've given you, it's command P, but it could equally have been command T and you can have a different hotkey for each one. So if you are not sure where you might use that, then it might be something that you don't use. It is perhaps a little bit more niche maybe and not just as simple as a simple keystroke like the copy and paste example that we looked at earlier. But that is what that is. A hotkey switch is to toggle between two different distinct states as opposed to just a single action. The next one down is open and this action is to open a file or a folder or an application. So if I come down here to access choose file or folder, you simply navigate to the particular folder or file. So here let me say, maybe I want to open, let's say system preferences, let's be exciting. So if I just search in here for system preferences, here, there we go, there's the application. So if I click OK, that has now, when I press that button, it will open system preferences on my Mac. And what you'll also notice is because system preferences is an application and it has an icon, then it has automatically bought in the icon for that application. And so I could leave the title on it, but equally, this is a good example to show how I don't really need an application. I don't need a title because I can see what the application is because it's very kindly bought in the icon for me. So this is a good one to use. If you are, for example, if this is our work state, if there are certain applications that you have to have open for work, then you may want to just add them into here so that when you go into your work mode, you can actually open the application. If you open applications often, you could use that. Of course, you can open applications from your doc. You can use the spotlight to search, as I often do. Well, actually, I use Alfred, but that's another video. You just press Command Space, type the name of the application and it opens up. So there are lots of ways to do this, but sometimes it is handy to have it on your stream deck. As I say, if you've just got one hand on your mouse and one on the stream deck, it can turn out to be a more efficient way to do things. So that is how you can open an application. You can also have it open documents or files. So if you, again, for work, maybe have a particular file that you work from, maybe a set of notes, maybe it's a sheet to track, whatever it might be, you can simply add a link to that in here. So I do that as well with sort of commonly used files where I need to open a series of files that might be in different locations on my Mac, then I can have a button for them and I don't need to actually go searching for them. They're just right there with the touch of a button. So that is the open command. Now, the next one is a text command. And if I drag that onto here, what this one does is with a press of a button, it simulates typing text. So why might that be useful? Well, let me just give you a very obvious example. Maybe at the end of an email, if you don't have an auto signature, maybe you type something like me, have a great day. Like that. And if I want to give this a little title, HGD, have a great day. So now when I press that button, it is actually going to type that text. And just to demonstrate that, what I shall do is I shall get a blank note for you and drag this over onto here. And with a bit of luck, when I press that button, he says, having not actually queued it up. One second. There you go. I had to pause that for a minute because I just realized I was going to demonstrate this, but I didn't even have the Stream Deck app open on my phone to show you. But there we go. I've got it open now. So if I press the button that corresponds to that action, then what you'll see is it's just basically typed out that text. So that is a way that if you do have things that you find yourself typing, often you can actually just program those in to a button. Now there is, to my mind, a better way to do this, which is using something called a text expander. And I'll do a whole video all about that because that is a way that basically you can do this by typing a few keystrokes on your Mac and it will do the same thing, basically spit out a whole reams of text if necessary. But that is for another video, but this is just to show what this action actually does. Now the next one we come down to on there is, oh, and by the way, you can also have this to press enter after you've inputted that text. And that can be useful if you have something where you're responding to things, I want to press return to either send a message or something like that at the end, then you can have it press enter at the end as well by toggling that on and off. And the last one that we've got in here is one that we've already really touched on a little bit, which is multimedia. And this is basically linked into the sort of multimedia settings on your computer where you can change between forward and backwards for your track, play, pause, stop, things like that. Fast forward, rewind, mute, increase volume, decrease volume, and so on. And that is how you can add these different actions to your stream deck. Now where it gets quite interesting is when we come into the stream deck actions, we've already touched on profiles. I'll come to folders a little bit later, as I say, I think they're a bit of an issue case now, I realize that. But what we also have is multi-actions. And a multi-action, when you drag that onto the button, it opens up this window and it says, drag an action from the right and drop it here. Basically, anything that you can do with single actions, you can also do with multi-actions. So what that means is that you can, for example, if I go back into the system, let's say you get into work and you want to open a website and you also want to open two programs, maybe that you use, and maybe you want to start some music playing, who knows how you work. But all of the things that you can do with single actions, you can also do with multi-actions. So this is great, for example, if, as I say, you have a particular set of applications that you use for a particular mind frame, a different particular work mode, you could just come in here and as we did before, choose the app. So just as I chose system preferences before, you could choose maybe Microsoft Excel. So I just get that one up just to give you an example. I'm going to be quite boring with the applications that I'm talking about here. Let's pretend that it is a work thing. So we've got Microsoft Excel app. So I'm just doing that from the application picker. So this one says, open Microsoft Excel. Let's say this one, we're going to open, let's be equally boring and choose Microsoft Word. One second, there we go. Just picking these from the application picker. And then let's say a website. Well, let's say you're going to check out what's going on on the Apple website. So there we go. So now we've got, with one click of a button, it's going to open that website. It's going to open Excel. It's going to open Word. And then it's also going to, let's say, just start playing our music. And that has all been done with one app, with one button rather. There are some other things that you can add to here, such as delays and so on. I'm not going to cover that in this. I'll cover that in the sort of more advanced level of usage. But this is just to show that you can sort of build out these multiple different actions. The different actions within the button don't need to have their own icon, but you can obviously change the icon for the overall action itself. And we do that when we come back out of here, we would just click on this multi-action. And let's say, let's just call it open apps, for example. So that is how we would do that. So that is now a multi-action that's going to do all of those different actions. There is a similar thing to that, which is a multi-action switch. So if I come into here, and just as before we had that switch to switch between different sort of work states or different action states rather that I showed you before. Well, this is the exact same thing, but where instead of having a single keystroke, it's activated by multiple actions again. And so there you just flick between the two different key states. You can change them either here or you can toggle them up at the top here and then you just add in your actions. So that is, again, a little bit niche perhaps, but that is how you would set up a multiple action. There is another one, which I can't quite figure out why people would have it. So if you know, then do let me know. But there's one here called random action. And in this one, you can go into here, you can drag a whole series of actions. So let's say, let's just use the example of a website, shall we? So let's say you want to add in five different websites. You could just add them all in here, just dragging and dropping, put in a URL for each one. You can see which one you're editing because it's highlighted in green. So if I come to that one, that would edit the URL for that. And so now we've got a list of actions, list of websites. And now when I click on that button, it would just open a random website. I can't quite figure out the use case for these random actions, but maybe it's for when people are on a stream or something like that and they want to just have some random music play or something like that, I'm not sure. But anyway, that is what that one does, just in case you were wondering. There is also a timer. So you can add that one on. In fact, I'm just gonna delete that random action one just to give us a bit more space. I'm gonna delete this multi-action one as well. It gives us a bit more space. There is a timer and with this one, you can set a duration. The duration is listed in seconds and then it plays a sound when it's finished. So this is if you want a timer. You can just press the button and it will start the timer. Maybe you want a coffee timer, say four minutes, something like that. So in that case, you would type 240 seconds. And then when you press the button, it will start the countdown and then when your coffee's ready, it will bing or make a noise and you can choose the noise from there. Or if you use the Pomodoro technique for productivity, then that would be a way that you could set a timer for that to count down your 20 minutes or whatever you have your Pomodoro technique counter set to. That would be a way that you could emulate that. The final one in here is sleep. And that is basically, it's just gonna put your device to sleep, your stream deck. And you can select here like whether you want it if you've got multiple stream decks, you can put them all to sleep at the same time or maybe just the one that you're using. As I said before, you can actually set this in the system preferences, the, sorry, the stream deck preferences. And this is on the first page. In fact, I'm not actually in a hardware stream deck at the moment, so let me just change to this one. When you've got a hardware stream deck, this is where you can change the sleep. So you can have it set to a particular time or whatever, or you can have it none. And then you can set a screensaver that's gonna run on the actual stream deck itself. And so if you have that set to automatic, so that or rather manual, then this is where you could just add a little button in there to do that. So that is a little bit of an overview of how you can add buttons and the sort of initial built in actions that are built into stream deck. We've looked at the system one, we've looked at the stream deck one, and I've shown you how you can build multiple actions and add various different types of actions to your stream deck. I'm going to leave it there for this video because again, I don't want to make these too long as individual videos. And in the next video, what I'm gonna look at is I'm going to show you about some of the other built in plugins rather. So some of these ones that you see down the right side and also some of the additional ones that you can get from third party developers and how you can use those. We'll also start to make this a little bit more pretty by adding some rather nicer icons than we've got as the standard ones that appear just as we've done it there. So that's all for this video. And if you found it useful, then please go ahead and like and subscribe the video and share it with your friends if you've got any other stream deck users that you think might find this useful. And in the meantime, I'll crack on with the next video and I'll drop it into the playlist over there on the right hand side as soon as it's done. I'll see you there soon.