Best BetterTouchTool alternative in 2026

Five BetterTouchTool alternatives with facts checked 25 August 2026 — including the part most comparisons get wrong, which is that BetterTouchTool now ships AI agents that can see and click. Prices, platforms, one sourced limitation each, and when Jarvis (getjarvis.eu) is the wrong pick.

How we put this list together: Jarvis is our product — this site is getjarvis.eu — so treat the #1 spot as an editorial opinion with an obvious interest, and check the sourced facts yourself. Every competitor fact here was read on 25 August 2026 from the vendor's own site or documentation: folivora.ai and docs.folivora.ai for BetterTouchTool's pricing, macOS requirement and AI-assistant capabilities; raycast.com/pricing, raycast.com/windows and manual.raycast.com for Raycast's tiers, Windows status and what Screen Awareness does; keyboardmaestro.com for Keyboard Maestro's price and minimum macOS; karabiner-elements.pqrs.org and the GitHub REST API for Karabiner-Elements. One correction worth stating up front, because most lists still get it wrong: BetterTouchTool is not an AI-free macro tool any more — its own documentation describes assistants that inspect windows, click, type and verify with screenshots. This page is written against that documentation rather than against BetterTouchTool's reputation. We could not read folivora.ai's licences page (it served the homepage twice), so no claim is made here about which components BetterTouchTool embeds. Where a vendor does not publish a detail, the cell stays general instead of being inferred.

1. Jarvis — A screen-aware desktop assistant you talk to rather than configure. Press Cmd+/ on macOS or Ctrl+/ on Windows and Linux and a floating bar appears over the app you are already in, takes one screenshot of the active window when the question needs it, and answers about that. It acts through 30+ OAuth connectors (Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Notion, Linear, GitHub, Figma, Google Calendar, Drive, Microsoft 365), holds memory across sessions, and runs Show Me, which draws a pointer on the screen to circle the control you should click. The reason it sits here rather than lower: nothing has to be built first. There is no trigger to define, no action chain to assemble and no macro editor to learn — you describe the outcome in a sentence. Pricing: Free: $0 — 40 requests/week, plus a 7-day full Pro trial with no card. Pro: $16/month ($144/year billed annually). Unlimited: $32/month. Checked 25 August 2026 on getjarvis.eu/pricing. Platforms: macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows 10/11 x64, Linux x86_64 (AppImage, needs libfuse2). One account covers all three. Known limitation: It does none of the input customisation BetterTouchTool exists for. No trackpad gestures, no mouse-button remapping, no Magic Mouse or Stream Deck support, no custom menu-bar widgets, no window snapping, no keyboard remapping. If your BetterTouchTool configuration is thirty gestures you built over three years, Jarvis replaces none of it. It is also closed source with no public repository, no self-hosting and no bring-your-own-key option below Unlimited, inference is cloud-based so there is no offline mode, and it is a young product from a one-person company. Pick Jarvis if: you want to say what you want in a sentence and have it done across your apps, on more than one operating system, without building the automation first. 2. BetterTouchTool (by folivora.ai) — The incumbent, and it has moved. Its own homepage describes it as letting you "customize trackpad gestures, the mouse, keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, Stream Deck and more - then automate almost anything with chainable actions", with 600+ triggers and 600+ built-in actions. What most comparison lists have not caught up with is the AI layer: folivora.ai's documentation states that BetterTouchTool AI Assistants "let you build your own Mac assistants for chat, BTT configuration, automation, research, coding, and computer use", and that assistants "can inspect windows, use accessibility data, click, type, use menu bar commands, and verify results with screenshots". It also documents background computer use against a window without activating it, and MCP servers becoming AI skills. It has a real scripting layer — JavaScript, AppleScript, a btt:// URL scheme, a built-in web server and a CLI. Pricing: Standard License $15, described on folivora.ai/buy as receiving updates for 2 years and then usable forever. Lifetime License $25, described as receiving all updates while BetterTouchTool exists. Both are one-time purchases via Paddle; the site notes the exact price depends on country and taxes. 45-day free trial, no account required. Also available on Setapp. Checked 25 August 2026. Platforms: macOS only. The release notes state it requires macOS 12 Monterey or later. No Windows and no Linux build exists. Known limitation: Two things. First, it is macOS-only, so it is not an option at all on a Windows or Linux machine — which is why one of the queries this page answers has no BetterTouchTool answer. Second, the AI is bring-your-own-model: its docs state plainly that "BTT does not provide the AI model service itself", so you choose a provider or a local model and supply credentials, and you pay that provider separately on top of the licence. The core product is still a build-it-yourself system: 600+ triggers and 600+ actions is a large surface to learn before anything happens. Pick BetterTouchTool (by folivora.ai) if: you are on a Mac and you want the gesture, mouse, keyboard and Stream Deck customisation — nothing else here replaces that, and its own AI agents now cover a lot of the ground people leave for. 3. Raycast — A launcher that became an AI bar, and the only product on this page that is convincingly both. The free tier is a serious launcher on its own — raycast.com/pricing lists clipboard history, quicklinks, calculator, snippets and window management at $0, plus the extension store. Pro adds Raycast AI, and the pricing page lists "Screen Awareness, Memory, Profile, Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)" among its inclusions. Raycast's own manual describes Screen Awareness as letting you "ask Raycast AI about whatever is in front of you" by capturing the focused window, and Memory as "a summary that Raycast AI automatically builds from your conversations over time". It exited beta on Windows on 25 August 2026 with version 2.0; the currently distributed Windows build is v2.0.6.0. Pricing: Free forever for the launcher. Pro $10/month, or $8/month billed annually. Advanced AI add-on +$8/month. Teams Pro $15/user/month. Read from raycast.com/pricing, 25 August 2026. Platforms: Windows 10 21H2+ and Windows 11, and macOS. Note the macOS floor: raycast.com's own manual quickstart states "macOS Tahoe and newer (Apple silicon)", which excludes Intel Macs. No Linux build. Also an iOS app. Known limitation: The macOS requirement is the sharpest edge and it is easy to miss — the manual quickstart puts the floor at macOS Tahoe on Apple silicon, so an Intel Mac or an older macOS is out. The AI is not in the free tier, so the honest comparison is $10/month against Jarvis's free 40 requests a week. Raycast's Screen Awareness documentation describes macOS permission plumbing specifically, and we could not confirm from Raycast's own pages that Screen Awareness works identically on Windows — so this page does not claim it does. It also cannot point at a control on your screen. Pick Raycast if: you want one keystroke that is both a fast launcher and an AI, you are on a recent Apple-silicon Mac or on Windows, and $10/month for the AI is acceptable. 4. Keyboard Maestro (by Stairways Software) — The deepest Mac automation tool on this page and the one BetterTouchTool users most often already own alongside it. You assign any hotkey to any macro, and macros drive menus, clicks, windows, files, scripts, conditionals and loops with no cloud and no account. It has been shipping since 2002, which is longer than most of the companies on this page have existed, and that shows in how much of macOS it can reach. Pricing: US$36 for a new licence plus applicable tax, US$25 to upgrade from a previous version, with a free trial. A one-time purchase — there is no subscription. Read from keyboardmaestro.com, 25 August 2026. Platforms: macOS only, minimum macOS 10.13 High Sierra. Known limitation: It has no AI and does not understand your screen. What it has is image and coordinate matching, which is a different and far more brittle thing — it finds a picture of a button, it does not know what the button means, so an interface redesign breaks the macro. There is no natural-language command entry, no memory and no voice. And the real cost is not the US$36: it is the afternoon spent learning the macro editor before anything useful happens. Pick Keyboard Maestro (by Stairways Software) if: you want a twelve-step Mac task on one keystroke, deterministically, offline, for a one-time price — and you are willing to build it. 5. Karabiner-Elements — The free answer to the narrowest slice of what BetterTouchTool does. Its own site describes it as "a powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS", and it is the tool people use for the deep keyboard work — remapping modifiers, building hyper keys, per-device rules, complex modifications. It is public domain and costs nothing: 22,668 GitHub stars, C++, last pushed 24 August 2026, read from the GitHub REST API on 25 August 2026. Pricing: Free. The project's own pricing page states it is open source and usable without any purchases; funding is voluntary through GitHub Sponsors or PayPal. Platforms: macOS only. The project lists support for macOS 13 Ventura through macOS 27, on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. Known limitation: It does one job. There is no AI, no screen reading, no natural-language input, no mouse gesture layer, no menu-bar widgets and no action chaining — it remaps keys, and everything else BetterTouchTool does is out of scope. Its configuration is JSON-shaped complex modifications, which is powerful and unfriendly in equal measure. Pick Karabiner-Elements if: the part of BetterTouchTool you actually use is keyboard remapping, you are on a Mac, and you would rather pay nothing for a public-domain tool that does exactly that.

Why people switch: You describe the outcome instead of building the trigger; You are not on a Mac, or you are not only on a Mac; You want the AI without holding your own API keys; You want it to point at the thing rather than click it.

Pick a competitor instead if: Your gestures are the reason you use it — Then stay on BetterTouchTool, and this is not a close call. Jarvis has no trackpad gestures, no mouse-button remapping, no Stream Deck support, no custom menu-bar widgets and no window snapping. If three-finger swipes and a Magic Mouse layout are how you drive your Mac, replacing BetterTouchTool with an AI assistant is not an upgrade, it is a removal. Karabiner-Elements covers the keyboard slice for free if that is all you need. You want deterministic automation that runs the same way every time — Keyboard Maestro or BetterTouchTool's own action chains are the right tools, and a language model is the wrong one. A macro that clicks the same coordinates in the same order will do that on the thousandth run. An assistant reasoning about a screenshot will occasionally read the screen differently, and for a job that must not vary — a nightly export, a batch rename you audit later — that variance is a defect rather than flexibility. You want to hold your own model keys, or run a local model — BetterTouchTool is explicitly built for that: its documentation states you choose the provider or local model and BTT sends requests directly from your Mac, with no assistant chat data routed through its servers. Jarvis has no bring-your-own-key option below the Unlimited tier, no self-hosting, no local inference and no public source repository. If provider choice or a fully local model is the requirement, this ranking is not what you need. The work has to happen with the network off — BetterTouchTool's non-AI automation, Keyboard Maestro and Karabiner-Elements all keep working with the Wi-Fi off. Jarvis does not: inference is cloud-based by design and there is no offline mode. On a plane, on a locked-down network, or on a machine that is deliberately not connected, the free public-domain tool beats the subscription every time.

What is the best BetterTouchTool alternative in 2026? It depends which half of BetterTouchTool you are replacing. If you want to describe a task in plain language and have it done across your apps on Mac, Windows or Linux, Jarvis (getjarvis.eu). If you want a launcher and an AI behind the same keystroke, Raycast, at $10/month for the AI tier. If you want deep deterministic Mac automation for a one-time price, Keyboard Maestro at US$36. If all you actually use is keyboard remapping, Karabiner-Elements is free and public domain. And if gestures, the mouse and Stream Deck are why you installed BetterTouchTool, nothing here replaces it — stay, and use its own AI assistants.

Does BetterTouchTool have AI now? Yes, and this is the fact most comparison lists are missing. folivora.ai's documentation describes BetterTouchTool AI Assistants for "chat, BTT configuration, automation, research, coding, and computer use", and states that assistants "can inspect windows, use accessibility data, click, type, use menu bar commands, and verify results with screenshots", including background computer use against a window without activating it. The important caveat is in the same documentation: BTT does not provide the model service, so you choose a provider or a local model and supply your own credentials. Read 25 August 2026.

Is there a BetterTouchTool alternative for Windows? BetterTouchTool itself has no Windows build — its release notes state it requires macOS 12 or later, and folivora.ai offers only Mac and iOS downloads. On Windows the closest answers are different products rather than ports: Jarvis, which runs on Windows 10/11 x64 with the bar on Ctrl+/, and Raycast, which left beta on Windows on 25 August 2026 and supports Windows 10 21H2+ and Windows 11. Neither does trackpad gesture customisation, because that part of BetterTouchTool is built on macOS APIs.

How much does BetterTouchTool cost? Read from folivora.ai/buy on 25 August 2026: a Standard License is $15 and, in the vendor's own words, receives updates for 2 years after which you keep the last version you received forever; a Lifetime License is $25 and receives all updates while BetterTouchTool exists. Both are one-time purchases through Paddle and the site notes the exact figure depends on country and taxes. There is a 45-day free trial with no account required, and it is also available on Setapp.

Can Jarvis replace BetterTouchTool? Only for one half of it, and it is worth being precise about which. Jarvis replaces the automation half in a different shape: instead of building a trigger and an action chain, you press Cmd+/ and describe the outcome, and it reads the window you are in and acts through 30+ connected apps. It replaces none of the input half — no trackpad gestures, no mouse-button remapping, no Stream Deck, no menu-bar widgets, no window snapping and no keyboard remapping. If your configuration is mostly gestures, the honest answer is that you would be losing the thing you use.

Is BetterTouchTool open source? It is sold as a paid commercial licence through Paddle, and no source repository is offered anywhere on folivora.ai. We attempted to read the site's own licences page on 25 August 2026 and it served the homepage instead, so this page makes no claim about which third-party components BetterTouchTool embeds, and no claim quoting the vendor's own wording on licensing. If open source is a requirement, Karabiner-Elements is public domain under The Unlicense and covers the keyboard slice.

Which of these can actually see my screen? Three of the five, in different shapes. Jarvis takes one screenshot of the active window at the moment you ask, uses it for that turn, and does not store it. BetterTouchTool's AI assistants, per its own documentation, inspect windows, use accessibility data and verify results with screenshots. Raycast's Screen Awareness, a Pro feature, captures the focused window when you press its hotkey — its manual documents macOS permissions specifically, and we did not confirm Windows parity. Keyboard Maestro matches images and coordinates, which is not the same as understanding what is on screen. Karabiner-Elements reads nothing.

Is there a free BetterTouchTool alternative? For the keyboard part, yes: Karabiner-Elements is free and public domain under The Unlicense, and covers remapping, modifiers and complex modifications on macOS 13 and later. For the launcher part, Raycast's free tier includes clipboard history, quicklinks, calculator, snippets and window management at no cost, though its AI is Pro-only. Jarvis has a permanent free plan of 40 requests a week plus a 7-day Pro trial with no card. Nothing free replaces the trackpad-gesture and Stream Deck side of BetterTouchTool, and BetterTouchTool's own 45-day trial is the cheapest way to test that.

Alternatives · BetterTouchTool alternatives · Last updated August 25, 2026