Best BetterTouchTool Alternatives for Mac (2026)

BetterTouchTool is the Swiss Army knife of Mac input customization: trackpad gestures, mouse buttons, keyboard shortcuts, the Touch Bar, window snapping, and deep scripting, all in one app. It's genuinely powerful, and for tinkerers it's hard to beat. But a couple of things send people looking for an alternative — a real learning curve, and a one-time price that's about $12 for two years of updates (you keep that version afterward) or about $24 for lifetime updates. For plenty of people, that's more app, and more money, than they need.

Good news: there are excellent alternatives in 2026, and several are free. Below is an honest look at each — what it costs and what it's actually for. Full disclosure: I make one of them (GestureCraft), and I'll tell you plainly when a free tool is the better pick for what you need.

At a glance

App	Price	Best for	One-time
BetterTouchTool	~$12 (2yr) / ~$24 (life)	Everything, deeply	Yes*
Karabiner-Elements	Free	Keyboard remapping	Free (open source)
Rectangle	Free	Window snapping	Free (open source)
Mac Mouse Fix	Free / $2.99	Mouse gestures & scrolling	Yes
Swish	$16	Trackpad window management	Yes
Multitouch	$15.99	Gestures, keys & windows	Yes
BetterMouse	$7.99	Mouse buttons & scrolling	Yes
SteerMouse	$19.99	Deep mouse-button, cursor & scroll	Yes
Jitouch	Free	Trackpad & Magic Mouse gestures (a free classic)	Free (open source)
Curflow	$9.99 (1 Mac) / $19.99 Pro	Draw-your-own gestures on any mouse or trackpad	Yes
GestureCraft	$7.99	Gestures + shortcuts + mouse buttons, in one app	Yes

*BetterTouchTool is a one-time purchase, but its Standard license includes only two years of updates (Lifetime costs more) and covers two Macs; GestureCraft covers three.

BetterTouchTool: the most powerful, if you'll learn it

Best for: power users who want to automate every input surface.

Nothing else covers as much ground. BetterTouchTool can remap trackpad gestures, mouse buttons, keys, the Touch Bar, and Stream Deck, snap windows, and drive elaborate scripted automations, with a huge community sharing presets. The trade-offs are the ones above: it takes real time to learn, and its one-time price buys two years of updates (~$12) or lifetime updates (~$24), on up to two Macs. There's a generous 45-day trial, so you can find out whether you'll use its depth before paying for it.

Karabiner-Elements: free, and the standard for keyboards

Best for: keyboard remapping, spending nothing.

If what you actually want is to remap keys — home-row mods, a hyper key, Vi-style bindings, per-device rules — Karabiner-Elements is free, open source, and the community default. It's deep and rock-solid. It does nothing with the trackpad or mouse, but for pure keyboard work it's all you need, and it costs nothing.

Rectangle: free window snapping

Best for: keyboard-driven window management, free.

Rectangle is a free, open-source window manager: snap and tile with keyboard shortcuts or by dragging to screen edges. If the only reason you were eyeing BetterTouchTool was to organize windows, start here — it's excellent and free. (Prefer to do it with trackpad swipes instead? See Swish below.)

Mac Mouse Fix: make a plain mouse feel like a trackpad, nearly free

Best for: adding gestures and smooth scrolling to a regular mouse.

Mac Mouse Fix adds trackpad-style gestures, smooth scrolling, and button actions to an ordinary mouse. It's open source with a free trial, and the permanent unlock is just $2.99. If your goal is a better mouse (note: it doesn't support Apple's Magic Mouse), this is a lot of value for almost nothing.

Swish: trackpad gestures for windows

Best for: managing windows with trackpad swipes and pinches.

Swish is a polished, single-purpose gem: swipe and pinch on a window's title bar to snap, resize, and move it between Spaces and displays. It's a $16 one-time purchase (also on Setapp). It's not a general gesture or shortcut mapper — it does window management, beautifully. See the focused GestureCraft vs Swish head-to-head.

Multitouch: a capable, do-more gesture toolkit

Best for: the deepest gesture toolkit, from the Rectangle developer.

Multitouch (from Ryan Hanson, the developer of Rectangle) is more than a trackpad mapper: it maps trackpad and Magic Mouse gestures — by finger count — and also remaps keys and mouse buttons, bundles Rectangle's window management, and runs scripts. At $15.99 one-time for three devices, well-maintained and supporting macOS 10.15 and later, it's the most capable app in this list after BetterTouchTool. See the focused GestureCraft vs Multitouch head-to-head.

BetterMouse: mouse customization done lightly

Best for: mouse buttons and scrolling, with per-app profiles.

BetterMouse gives you smooth scrolling, cursor-speed control, and mouse-button-to-shortcut bindings with per-app profiles — no drivers or kernel extensions. At $7.99 one-time — the same price as GestureCraft — it's a clean pick if your customization is purely about the mouse. See the focused GestureCraft vs BetterMouse head-to-head.

SteerMouse: the deepest mouse remapper, if you skip the trackpad

Best for: serious per-button remapping and cursor/scroll tuning on a wired or gaming mouse.

SteerMouse (from Plentycom Systems, in development since 2005) is the heavyweight for physical mice: up to 24 functions per button with chording, cursor-acceleration and scroll tuning beyond the macOS defaults, and per-app profiles, across wired, Bluetooth, and gaming mice from Logitech, Razer, Kensington, and more. It does no trackpad gestures and doesn't support the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. At $19.99 one-time with a 30-day trial, it's the pick when your customization is all about a multi-button mouse. See the focused GestureCraft vs SteerMouse head-to-head.

Jitouch: a free gesture classic, now frozen

Best for: free trackpad and Magic Mouse gestures, including its unique character gestures.

Jitouch is a beloved free, open-source gesture app whose signature trick is character gestures — draw a letter on the trackpad to run a command — across the built-in trackpad, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse. The honest caveat: its code has been frozen since early 2023, the official build is Intel-only (Apple Silicon via Rosetta), and it's flagged end-of-life with no confirmed macOS 26 support. It still works and it's free, but no one is updating it. See the focused GestureCraft vs Jitouch head-to-head.

Curflow: draw your own gestures, on any mouse or trackpad

Best for: drawing free-form gesture shapes, including on a regular mouse or the Magic Mouse.

Curflow is a newer app built around one idea: you draw the gesture. Hold right-click on a mouse or option-pan on a trackpad, draw a shape, and it runs the mapped action — with a repeat mode (draw once, click to repeat) and per-app flows. Its reach is the draw: it works on the trackpad and any mouse, including the Magic Mouse and third-party mice. It's a one-time $9.99 for one Mac (or $19.99 for a three-Mac Pro license), runs on macOS 14 and later, and has a 14-day trial. See the focused GestureCraft vs Curflow head-to-head.

GestureCraft: gestures, shortcuts, and mouse buttons in one app

Best for: unifying three input surfaces in one native app, without BetterTouchTool's complexity.

This is the one I make, so here's the honest positioning. GestureCraft sits between the everything-platform and the single-purpose tools. A rule reads like a sentence: when I do a trackpad gesture, press a key, click a mouse button, or make a 2-finger tap or swipe on the Magic Mouse, run a Shortcut, launch an app, snap a window, or run a script — in every app or just one.

It's a native, notarized app built for macOS 26+, sits at near-zero idle CPU, keeps no account, and does its work on your Mac. It's a one-time $7.99 with free updates on up to three Macs — less than a BetterTouchTool Lifetime license, with no two-year update clock and no subscription.

Straight talk: if you only need one surface, use the free tool built for it — Karabiner-Elements for the keyboard, Rectangle for windows, Mac Mouse Fix for a mouse. And if you want BetterTouchTool's full depth (Touch Bar, Stream Deck, sprawling automation), get BetterTouchTool. GestureCraft is for the person who wants gestures and shortcuts and mouse buttons in one clean app, without paying for — or learning — all of that.

Which should you pick?

• Deepest control of every input surface, willing to learn it → BetterTouchTool.
• Only keyboard remapping, spend nothing → Karabiner-Elements (free).
• Only window management → Rectangle (free, keyboard) or Swish (trackpad, $16).
• Only a better mouse → Mac Mouse Fix (free / $2.99) or BetterMouse ($7.99).
• Draw your own gestures, on a trackpad or any mouse → Curflow ($9.99).
• Gestures + shortcuts + mouse buttons in one native app, one-time → GestureCraft.

Weighing just these two? See the focused GestureCraft vs BetterTouchTool head-to-head. Want gestures specifically? See the best Mac trackpad gesture apps guide. New to gesture rules? Here's how to run an Apple Shortcut from a trackpad gesture. More how-to guides: launch an app from a gesture, map your mouse side buttons, use an external Magic Trackpad, and custom multi-finger gestures on macOS 26.