Frequently asked Questions

There is a bug in Mojave’s, Catalina's, Big Sur's and Ventura's handling of application permissions, which can prevent some applications (such as KeyCue) to work properly. Sometimes it can happen that the permissions get lost, although they are selected in the system preferences.

Follow the steps described in our learn center.

Starting with version 10.0, KeyCue is a Universal Application that runs natively on Apple Silicon processors. Older versions of KeyCue basically work on Apple Silicon processors, but they are slower and require Rosetta. If you have a Mac with an Apple Silicon processor, we therefore highly recommend updating to KeyCue 10.

Yes, in general the current version 10.1 of KeyCue runs on macOS Ventura.

We are in the process of preparing a maintenance release that irons out some small Ventura compatibility issues and will release a beta of KeyCue 10.2 soon. We recommend turning on the "also check for beta versions" in KeyCue Settings -> "About KeyCue", such that you will be informed as soon as we have released the beta.

Monterey/Big Sur: KeyCue 9.10 (KeyCue 10.1 is recommended) or newer
Catalina: KeyCue 9.7 or newer
Mojave: KeyCue 9.1 or newer

For more information, please see our download page.

Yes, we take special care not to leave our long-time users behind. The latest version of KeyCue is compatible with El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, and even OS X versions back to 10.7.

For more information, please see our download page.

You cannot. Unfortunately, some applications have shortcuts that will work only with a US keyboard. The problem is that the developers of these applications did not consider that keyboards for other languages may have other layouts and symbols.

For example, a German keyboard does not have keys labeled with “[” and “]”. If an application uses these characters for menu shortcuts (such as command-"]”), KeyCue will include them in the shortcut table, although you cannot type these shortcuts.

However, you can activate all shortcuts by clicking – even those you cannot type.

When the shortcut table is currently visible, type the "KeyCue Settings" shortcut at the end of the list or click this item. If this does not work, locate the KeyCue application icon in the Finder and double-click it. This will launch KeyCue if it is not yet running; the KeyCue icon will briefly appear on the screen. When KeyCue was already active in the background, double-clicking its icon opens the settings window instead. With KeyCue 8.0 or newer, you can also define a custom trigger for quickly opening the settings window.

With KeyCue 8.0 or newer, you can also define a custom trigger fro quickly opening the settings window.

To uninstall KeyCue, perform these steps:

1. Open the KeyCue settings window
2. In Activation, turn "Automatically start at login" off
3. Click the Quit button in the bottom left corner
4. Delete the KeyCue application

OS X contains an option that allows utility applications like KeyCue to interact with your computer on your behalf. By default, this option is disabled, so you need to turn it on. KeyCue can help you with this: The message window contains a button that opens System Preferences and selects the pane that contains the required option. The actual result depends on the current version of OS X. On Mavericks and newer (including Yosemite), enable KeyCue in the “Accessibility” section; on older versions of OS X, activate the option "Enable access for assistive devices".

By default, KeyCue uses command-option-K as the shortcut for opening the Settings window, but this shortcut is active only as long as the shortcut table is visible on the screen. The reason for this is that KeyCue switches to a different shortcut when command-option-K is already in use by the current application. To see which shortcut opens the Settings window, you therefore must open the shortcut table and type the "KeyCue Settings" shortcut while the shortcut table is visible.

KeyCue uses a "smart self installation" technique that makes installing and updating a breeze. Just mount the downloaded disk image and double-click the KeyCue icon inside. KeyCue will quit an older copy that may be running, copy itself to the Applications folder and launch the newly installed copy. There is no magic involved: You could do all this by hand as well; KeyCue just simplifies and automates the process and gets you up and running in seconds.

Some menus appear with an icon instead of text in the menu bar. For example, the script menus of some applications have a script icon as the menu title. KeyCue currently cannot display the proper symbols and shows a blank menu header instead.