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