If you have been wondering about how to get dedicated function keys set for your IDE/text editor of choice. Here's a little Gem I found the other day with some help from Jeremy Ross.
The Issue
I've been using IntelliJ IDEA with Illuminated Cloud 2 and some of the key combinations are 3 or 4 simultaneous presses one of witch could be a function key (f1-f12). This makes it a total of up to 5 keys I would need to press at once... and I can't remember that many at a time so. I decided to try an remove a key.
So to speak since technically the Touch bar has no keys.
Default Touch Bar
I had heard about BetterTouchTool and gave it a try but I was not able to choose the default function keys. I could recreate them but the spacing was off and it seemed like a lot of work.
The Solution:
I ended up finding that you are able to assign the function keys to specific programs in the settings. To do this:
Open System Preferences
Then open Keyboard
Choose the Shortcuts tab
Select Function Keys on the right hand side
Use the + to add programs that will use the function keys
I added 3 programs so far so it looks like this:
Programs that default to Function Keys
Function Keys
Now my IDEs show function keys and I can still pull up the other Touch Bar short cuts by holding the fn key.... I probably wont be doing that too much though.
