GestureCraft vs Curflow (2026)

Curflow and GestureCraft chase the same goal — trigger an action with a gesture instead of reaching for the keyboard — but they get there in genuinely different ways. Curflow is built around drawing your own gesture shapes, on a trackpad or on any mouse. GestureCraft maps discrete trackpad gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse buttons to deeper actions like Shortcuts, scripts, and window snaps. Both are one-time purchases, actively maintained, and light on your Mac. Full disclosure: I make GestureCraft, so I'll be straight about what Curflow does better — and it does a few things GestureCraft doesn't.

At a glance

	GestureCraft	Curflow
Price	$7.99 once — 3 Macs	$9.99 once (1 Mac) · $19.99 Pro (3 Macs)
What it's for	Gestures + shortcuts + mouse buttons, unified	Drawing your own gestures on mouse or trackpad
How you trigger	Multi-finger trackpad gestures, keys, or mouse buttons	Draw a path (hold right-click on a mouse, option-pan on a trackpad)
Trackpad gestures	Yes — tap, swipe, hold by finger count	Yes — drawn paths
Draw-your-own free-form gestures	No	Yes — its signature
Gestures on any mouse (incl. Magic Mouse)	2-finger tap & swipe	Yes
Keyboard shortcuts as triggers	Yes	No — gesture-triggered only
Mouse buttons as triggers	Yes — click & hold	No — a held button starts a drawn gesture
Actions it runs	Shortcuts, app launches, window snaps, scripts, key sequences	Navigation, tabs, clipboard, app switching, keyboard-shortcut output (AppleScript "coming soon")
Repeat mode (draw once, click to repeat)	No	Yes
Per-app mappings	Yes	Yes
macOS	26+ (native, notarized)	14+
Idle overhead	Near-zero (event-driven)	Low (event-driven; ~0.1%/day battery, per Curflow)
Actively maintained	Yes	Yes
Subscription	No (one-time)	No (one-time)

What Curflow does well

Best for: drawing your own gesture shapes — and adding gestures to any mouse, including third-party ones.

Give Curflow its due — it's a polished newer app (by solo developer Luis Mesa) with a clear idea done well: 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 nice repeat mode where you draw once and then click to repeat. Its real advantage over GestureCraft is reach: it brings draw-your-own gestures to any mouse, including third-party mice — GestureCraft's mouse-surface gestures are 2-finger taps and swipes on the Magic Mouse, and it doesn't cover third-party mice. You get per-app flows (Global, Chrome, Finder, VS Code), actions for navigation, tabs, clipboard, app switching, and mapping a gesture to any keyboard shortcut, and it runs on macOS 14 and later — so it covers Macs older than GestureCraft's macOS 26 requirement. It's a universal build for Apple Silicon and Intel, with a 14-day trial. If drawing your own gestures — especially on a mouse — is what you're after, Curflow is built for exactly that, and I'd point you to it.

Where GestureCraft is different

Best for: discrete gestures plus keyboard and mouse-button triggers, into Shortcuts, scripts, and windows. GestureCraft comes at the same idea from the other side. Instead of drawing shapes, it recognizes discrete multi-finger trackpad gestures — a two-finger tap, a three-finger swipe, a four-finger hold — and it doesn't stop at the trackpad: it also uses keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons (click and hold) as triggers, and it recognizes 2-finger taps and swipes on the Magic Mouse (swipes are opt-in and require disabling macOS's native 2-finger swipe in System Settings > Mouse). A rule reads like a sentence: when I do a trackpad gesture, press a key, or click a mouse button, run a Shortcut, launch an app, snap a window, type a keystroke sequence, or run a script, in every app or just one. Two practical differences matter here: GestureCraft runs Apple Shortcuts, shell scripts, and window snaps today, where Curflow currently maps gestures to keyboard shortcuts and lists AppleScript actions as "coming soon"; and it's native and notarized for macOS 26. Straight talk on what it doesn't do: no free-form drawn gestures, and no pinch, rotate, or character-drawing gestures that Curflow's draw-your-own model enables — Curflow does genuinely more on those fronts. Both apps are event-driven and light on the battery, so that's not a deciding factor between them.

Price and Macs

Both are one-time, no subscription, with a 14-day trial — so this comes down to how many Macs you cover. GestureCraft is $7.99 once for three Macs, with free updates. Curflow is $9.99 for one Mac (regularly $15.99) with a year of updates, or a $19.99 Pro license for three Macs with lifetime updates. For a single Mac the two are within a couple of dollars; across three Macs GestureCraft is meaningfully cheaper. Neither price is the reason to choose one over the other, though — the model is. Pay for the one whose way of triggering fits how you actually work.

Which should you pick?

• You want to draw your own gesture shapes, with a repeat mode → Curflow.
• You want drawn gestures or pinch/rotate gestures on a mouse — or the Magic Mouse → Curflow has free-form drawing and more gesture types; GestureCraft offers 2-finger taps and swipes on the Magic Mouse (swipes are opt-in and require disabling macOS's native 2-finger swipe in System Settings).
• You're on macOS 14 or 15 (not yet on macOS 26) → Curflow.
• You want keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons as triggers too, not only drawn gestures → GestureCraft.
• You want to run Apple Shortcuts, shell scripts, and window snaps now → GestureCraft.
• You're on macOS 26, or want the lower price across three Macs → GestureCraft.

Still comparing? See the best Mac trackpad gesture apps guide, or the full roundup of Mac gesture and input apps.