Spark is a powerful, and easy to use shortcuts manager. You can use it to set “hot keys” to open applications and documents, execute AppleScripts, control iTunes, trigger menu items, and more.
The biggest problem Spark has, though, is a complete lack of documentation. There’s no help file and there’s no documentation in the downloaded file or apparently on the web either, as I realised after Kati posted a comment asking about using Spark. So Kati – thanks for triggering me to make this post!
Here are the steps to set up some basic shortcut keys of your own. Once you understand the basics it’s not difficult at all.
When you first launch Spark you’ll see this intro screen:
Check the two boxes marked “Activate Spark at Login” and “Activate Spark immediately” as shown in the red box above. This will make sure Spark will always launch and your shortcut keys will continue to work after you reboot the computer.
Now you’ll see this main screen. The table is blank at the moment but once you set some shortcut keys it will display them.
Ignore this screen for now and open the File menu, select “New HotKey” and you’ll see a sub-menu with the different types of hotkeys you can set with Spark:
You can test each type for yourself later, for now choose the “Application” sub-menu to set up a hotkey that opens an application for you. This is the application hotkey pane you’ll see:
I’ve set this one up to use the hotkey F2 to open the application Firefox. You’ll need to set all four of the options showing in the pane:
- Shortcut – the keystroke that will make the hotkey’s action happen, in this case it’s launching an application.
- Name – just to help you remember what your shortcut does, so I called mine “Launch Firefox”.
- Action – there’s some options here, for an application “Launch” is probably the one you want as it will also bring the application to the front if it’s already running.
- Application – click the “Choose…” button and select the application from the file chooser.
Lastly click on the “Create” button to create the shortcut. That’s all you need to do – press the key you selected and your application will launch!
If you select the other types of shortcuts, document or iTunes for example, the options are different but most of them are self explanatory. For those that aren’t obvious you can always try using them then press the shortcut key to test what they do. If you don’t like the action, come back to Spark and double-click on your action in the table to edit it.
What are you using shortcuts to do? What would you like to use shortcuts to do? Leave a comment!
Website: Spark
- Ricky Buchanan
Kati April 15, 2009 at 12:17 am
I want F13 to launch Mouse Keys. I use it on very slow setting to move a fraction at a time when i need more finer precise movements like for video/photo editing
I clicked on new hotkey.. application etc I can get system preferences to come up then it just makes it launch that.
If you go into system preferences or Universal access and choose mouse theres a box that you can tick that says press option 5 times to switch mouse keys on/off
my question is how do i get it so i just press F13 to switch mouse keys on/off rather than pressing one key 5 times as I’m not good with actions that involve quick repititions, so this is not physically easy for me to do.
Plus I can never remember which squiggle represents ‘option’ as there isn’t a key that actually says ‘option’ on it!
Thanks
Kati April 15, 2009 at 12:18 am
I want F13 to open mouse keys instead of having to press option 5 times.
How do I do that?
Kati April 16, 2009 at 9:39 pm
You know in universal access where you can toggle mouse keys on/off by pressing option key 5 times? (can never remember which squiggle this is!)
How can I get spark to do this.. by say.. pressing F14 instead?
If i follow your instructions it will launch system preferences or universal access but not specifically Mouse keys.
I was just thinking I could set them up for really tiny movements when I needed more accuracy and need a hot key to toggle it on/off in one single key, as its not something that would be needed daily.
Ricky Buchanan April 17, 2009 at 4:30 pm
@Kati: I’ll experiment with the Mouse Keys thing – it’s a good idea but it’s going to take a little AppleScript I think. Give me a week and ask again?
Kati April 17, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I dont know why this has gone on 3 times! I only did other two posts cos others didnt show up when page reloaded.. lol!
Thought it hadnt worked. Sorry about that!
Ricky Buchanan April 17, 2009 at 9:42 pm
@Kati: Don’t worry about it – it’s the system being dumb. It sometimes mistakenly thinks comments are spam and when it does it just eats them with no notification to the user! If a comment doesn’t show up when you hit ‘submit’, it’s probably in the queue of posts that want me to look at them to check for spam.
Paul Acaley April 19, 2009 at 11:57 pm
I would like to see text to speech to have a controller to stop pause start and also underline or highlight word that is being read, and also work with other programs like PDF files. instead of copying it and pasting into a text file so that it can speech work.
Can you Help me or do you know of a program. It would help young kids read a long and to keep up what is being read.
Sincerely
Paul Acaley
Ricky Buchanan April 21, 2009 at 7:39 pm
@Paul: I think a program such as GhostReader would do what you need – it has stop/start/pause and can highlight the current sentence or word being read out.
Hob Soul June 24, 2009 at 11:15 am
Im looking for a program that can start/pause/resume (not disable) my internet connection and/or either start/pause/resume a download
as in a download manager… But I cant find any with it, thats why.
Juvenal Sahiri October 23, 2009 at 8:28 am
Spark is fantastic when it comes to launching applications. But I could not get it to work for system or Itunes. I followed the same logic as for applications. Also, how does one delete a hotkey for a particular activity, e.g, if I wanted to delete all the hotkeys I created for system or itunes, how would I go about it. Noticed that one can edit and put in a new one, but not delete. Mac preferences usually have a + and minus to add or remove an item.
Thanks
Tom C. April 16, 2011 at 6:05 am
how can I create a shortcut to toggle between 2 different applications?