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Emergency stop

A preset can take over the keyboard and mouse completely, which is the point of it and also why there has to be a way out that cannot fail. The emergency stop only ever stops. It halts the engine, lets go of every key, mouse button, and MIDI note the app is holding, and makes the pointer visible again. It never starts anything, so there is no risk in using it when you are unsure what is happening.

Three ways to trigger it

1. The keyboard shortcut. Control Option Command and the period key, from anywhere on the Mac. It can be changed in Settings, General, Emergency Stop.
2. Holding a button on the controller. Hold Home / PS / Guide for two seconds. This works no matter what the preset maps that button to, and it is the one to remember: if a preset has taken over the keyboard and mouse, the controller in your hands is still a way out.
3. The menu bar. Click the InputConfig icon and press Emergency Stop.

Give any control its own stop button

In the binding editor, set a row's output type to App Action and choose Emergency Stop. That control stops everything the moment it is pressed. A back paddle or an unused face button is a good choice. On the PlayStation Access Controller, a dedicated switch on one of the expansion ports works well, because it can be placed wherever it is easiest to reach.

When a game swallows the shortcut

A game running full screen with exclusive input can eat system shortcuts. The controller hold and a bound Emergency Stop output both run inside InputConfig's own polling, so they keep working when the keyboard shortcut cannot get through. That is why the controller path is on by default.

If another app owns the shortcut

Only one app can register a given system-wide shortcut. If another app already has Control Option Command period, InputConfig says so instead of failing silently, and the fix is to change one of them.

Questions

Related

• Your first preset
• The binding editor
• The PlayStation Access Controller on a Mac