Tinycast ships with nothing bound. Every shortcut is one you record.

What can take a shortcut

The palette itself (App Launcher)
The built-in commands: Search Files, Clipboard History, Search Emoji & Symbols, Show Notes, Create Note, Search Notes
Every application, and every System Settings pane
Every quicklink, custom command and extension command
All 31 system actions
All 30 window commands

A built-in command's shortcut appears in two panes — Settings → Commands and its own feature pane — but it is one binding, not two settings.

Recording one

The recorder is not a focusable control. Click it, then press the combination you want.

A callout above the field shows the prompt, then your held modifiers live, then a conflict message if the chord is taken — naming the action that owns it, exactly as that action's own row does.

Recording needs no permission and no event tap. Only using certain kinds of binding does.

Double-tap modifiers

Any action can be bound to a double-tapped lone ⌃, ⌥, ⇧ or ⌘.

The exact rules:

A tap is a press from no modifiers held, exactly one of the four, no fn, no other key and no mouse click, released within 250 ms.
A double-tap is a second tap of the same modifier starting within 300 ms of the first release.
It fires on the second release, not the second press — so the modifier is already up when the action runs, and "double-tap and hold" is deliberately a non-event.

⇧ is bindable this way even though a bare ⇧ combo is rejected. Caps Lock is not eligible — that is what the Hyper key is for. Caps Lock being on does not disqualify taps.

This needs Accessibility, and never prompts for it. The binding records regardless, the recorder shows an inline warning that opens System Settings, and the listener installs the moment the grant lands.

The event tap is installed only while something is bound to a double-tap, so if you never use one, you pay nothing.

Hyper key

Settings → General → Hyper Key turns one physical key into ⌃⌥⌘, or ⌃⌥⇧⌘ with Include Shift on.

Candidates: Caps Lock, Right Control, Right Shift, Right Option, Right Command.

Function keys are deliberately not offered — the top-row media functions fire below the level this works at, so binding F1 would still dim the display.

Existing combo hotkeys fire from Hyper + key with no extra registration.

The ✦ notation

Any combo whose modifiers are a superset of the Hyper chord renders as a single ✦. So ⌃⌥⌘G shows as ✦G, and ✦⇧G when a modifier survives.

This is notation, not a preference — there is no toggle. With no Hyper key configured, a literal ⌃⌥⌘G renders as itself.

Include Shift

Flipping this re-points every stored combo, so nothing breaks. A re-point that would collide with another action's chord is skipped, and that row keeps its literal keycaps.

The row is disabled while Hyper Key is None.

Quick Press

Settings → General → Quick Press decides what a Hyper key press with no other key does: Does Nothing (default), the original key, or Trigger Escape.

Escape is the popular choice for Caps Lock users.

Caps Lock specifics

While Caps Lock serves as Hyper it is remapped at the hardware level. That is cleared when you unbind it and when Tinycast quits, and it never survives a reboot.

During the brief moment before the remap takes hold, the Caps Lock LED can still toggle. That is hardware behaviour, not something Tinycast can prevent.

Hyper needs Accessibility and never prompts. A watchdog retries installation until the grant lands, notices revocation, revives a tap macOS has disabled, and clears a stuck key. On fast user switching it stops until the session is active again.

Enabled, hidden and disabled

Hiding a launcher row does not disable its shortcut. Hiding changes what search shows.

Disabling a feature does disable its shortcuts. File Search, Notes, window commands, quicklinks, custom commands and system actions all re-check their feature switch before running, so a registered shortcut for a disabled feature does nothing.

A system action's confirmation applies to its hotkey exactly as it does in the palette.

Lifecycle

Bindings are carried in settings backups, but only export → import within one build is guaranteed to round-trip.

Bindings for items deleted while Tinycast was not running are pruned at launch.

Hotkeys