Features

Keyboard Hotkey Utility

Key Ace is an easy to use hotkey utility used to assign actions to any key combination on your keyboard.

You can create hotkeys to launch applications, control iTunes, adjust system volume and more.

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  Hot Keys

  You can specify any key combination to be used as the hotkey to activate the specified action. For example, you can specify that you want Ctrl+F5 to activate Expose, Command+Shift+Option+P to play/pause iTunes, etc.

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  Actions

  There are many actions you can specify for a hotkey. These include controlling iTunes (play/pause, next track, prior track, stop), launch any application on your system, open any website URL, eject your CD/DVD, adjust system volume up/down, and send any keystroke.

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  HotKey Availability

  You add hotkeys to groups and each group can be setup to have the hotkeys in that group work in all applications, work in only the specified applications or to work in all except the specified applications.

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  Preference Pane

  Key Ace installs as a system preference pane. This makes it easy to quickly change hotkeys and change Key Ace settings.

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  Preference Pane

  After installing the Key Ace preference pane, you access it by going to the System Preferences and the Key Ace preference pane will be listed there. You go there to add hotkeys and start/stop the Key Ace agent. When the Key Ace agent is stopped, the hotkeys will not be processed. When running, the Key Ace agent runs in the background and you will see a Key Ace icon in the system status bar at the top of the screen (unless you have this option turned off).

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  Growl Notifications

  Key Ace supports Growl notifications. Growl allows many applications (now including Key Ace) to unintrusively tell you when things happen. Please see the Growl website for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Why has Key Ace been discontinued?

I originally created Key Ace for myself to use with a gaming keyboard I was using. I then decided to make it available for sale in case other people needed the same thing.

I no longer use that keyboard and haven't used Key Ace for quite some time. That, combined with the fact that there has been very limited sales since it was launched (only 7), I've determined it is too much effort to keep working on this project for such a limited audience.

What isn't there a Windows version?

There is no Windows version of Key Ace as I initially created this application for myself and I use a Mac. However, if I get a lot of people requested a Windows version, I may look into creating one.

Release Notes

Version 2.0
Released: January 13, 2011

• Removed system status bar item. As pointed out by a couple users, there really wasn't a need for a Key Ace icon to appear in the system status bar. So, to free up space, this has been removed.
• Combined "Update" and "Preferences" tabs in the Key Ace Preference Pane. With the removal of the status bar item, there was not much left on the Preferences tab so it was combined with the items on the "Update" tab.
• A number of new actions have been added in response to requests by Key Ace users. The new actions are:
  • Open File
  • Open Folder
  • Run AppleScript
  • Run AppleScript File
  • Run Shell Script
  • Run Shell Script File
• Added F16, F17, F18, F19 keys - These keys are present on some keyboards and in the prior version Key Ace reported them as "unknown key". These now appear with the proper "F" key designations.
• Added Growl support for many of the actions - the icons used were designed to be used with the "Bezel" display style as this would then mimic the Apple system volume, eject, etc. notifications.

Version 1.0
Released: March 16, 2010

• This is the initial release of Key Ace.

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Screenshots

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Demonstration Videos

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