Physical controllers

cliply supports five ways to drive the workspace hands-free: a VIA-compatible macro-pad, the AMITOSAI MTS-MACRO14, an Elgato Stream Deck, any gamepad, and a phone or tablet paired as a touch remote pad. All five share the same action catalog — tag clips, mark events, undo, qualify with variants or zones, control playback, toggle workspace panels, and run clip operations.

Opening the configurator

Press ? (Cmd/Ctrl + /) to open the workspace shortcuts overlay. Its footer is a single strip titled "Physical controllers", with one compact chip per device — Remote, Soyuz, MTS-Macro14, Stream Deck, 8BitDo Micro and Arcade Stick — select a chip to open the configurator on that device's tab.

The configurator itself is one overlay: a device rail runs across the top (a live green dot marks each connected device), with the mapping panel for the active device's tab below it. The remote pad leads the rail, set apart from the hardware group — it's the one controller that needs no extra purchase — and opening the configurator without naming a device lands there.

You don't have to go through the shortcuts overlay to get there:

• ⌥M opens (or closes) it from anywhere in the workspace — it respects typing and open dialogs, and Escape always closes it.
• The pad status chip in the clip log's footer strip opens it too. The chip shows whichever connected device was most recently active, along with its layer (for example, "Gamepad · Layer 1"); it pulses while a variant or zone qualify is armed, and dims when nothing's connected. Hover the clip log and the strip swaps to row-gesture hints instead (a small ? icon marks it) — move away and the chip comes back.
• From the Decks page: the joystick button in a deck's config-card header, or Physical controllers in a deck's context menu. Opening it from a deck shows that deck's own tag and event names in the configurator.

The three layers

Every device organizes its actions into the same three virtual layers:

Each device reserves one control to cycle through the layers.

Because it's dedicated hardware, it keeps working while you're typing notes or have a dialog open — it never fights the keyboard. The one exception is gamepads: browsers only report gamepad input while the tab is focused.

VIA macro-pad

The VIA macro-pad (Soyuz Encoder) connects over WebHID in Chrome and Edge, or through the desktop app.

1. Plug in the pad and open its tab in the configurator.
2. Select Write layout to keyboard once. cliply writes the mapping directly into the pad's own memory, so it persists across computers and reboots.

In the configurator, click a key or press it physically to select it for mapping — a built-in test mode.

The LAYER key, bottom-right, cycles the three layers with a tap; long-press it (about half a second) to overlay a cheatsheet showing the real names of your tags, reactions, and statuses.

Qualify with variants or zones using the pad's two hold-safe keys: hold one down to pick several qualifiers, or tap it once for a one-shot pick — the next key press qualifies the clip and you're right back to tagging.

The three knobs handle jog, playback speed, and clip navigation. While a "just tagged" clip pill is on screen, the first two knobs switch contextually to trimming the clip's IN and OUT points.

Save, load, and export mapping presets as JSON to hand to a colleague — presets are per-device, so they don't carry over to the other controller types.

AMITOSAI MTS-MACRO14

The AMITOSAI MTS-MACRO14 is a generic CH57x 12-key + 2-knob pad that connects over Bluetooth, 2.4G, or USB. Its two knobs sit stacked on the right side of the pad, and the configurator's key grid mirrors that shape. Unlike the VIA pad, it isn't reprogrammed live — it's programmed once, over the USB cable, and works wirelessly afterward.

From its tab in the configurator, program it one of two ways:

• Select Write layout over USB for a one-click flash, from the desktop app or from Chrome via WebHID.
• Download the layout as a YAML file and run it through the open-source ch57x-keyboard-tool:

ch57x-keyboard-tool upload < cliply-amitosai-mts-macro14.yaml

The pad's own side layer button is intentionally neutralized — all three of its hardware layers carry the same codes, so cliply's on-screen layers are what actually switch. Use the bottom-right key to cycle them instead. The two knob pushes are mappable keys too, preset to play/pause (knob 1) and mute (knob 2) on every layer — if the pad was programmed before this shipped, re-run Write layout over USB (or re-download and re-apply the YAML) so the pushes pick it up.

Defaults: tags 1–8 fill the two top rows; the bottom row holds undo, variants, and zones.

Elgato Stream Deck

The Stream Deck (MK.2, V2, or original — all 15-key) connects from its tab in the configurator, in Chrome or Edge. Quit Elgato's own Stream Deck app first — it holds the device and blocks the connection.

Each key is its own LCD screen: it shows your live tag and event names, colored by action family, and renders the active layer directly on the hardware — labels update automatically when you switch decks or layers. The bottom-right key cycles layers and shows which one (L1/L2/L3) is active.

Variants and zones each get their own color, and the armed qualify key lights up in its hue. Hold the momentary Events (hold to shift) key and the tag keys fire and relabel as their matching event.

A brightness slider in the configurator adjusts the deck's screen. The Stream Deck also works from the desktop app, with no browser required there.

Gamepad

Any standard gamepad works, with zero setup — the settings capture flow binds by physical press, so exact button indices never matter. cliply ships two named profiles, 8BitDo Micro and 8BitDo Arcade Stick; any other standard-mapping pad still works, just without cosmetics tuned to its exact shape.

The device rail (and the ? shortcuts-overlay footer) lists one entry per profile — 8BitDo Micro and Arcade Stick. Selecting one switches the silhouette, button labels, hints, and default mapping to match that pad.

8BitDo Micro — pair it in D mode: power on the pad, then hold the pair button for about a second until the LED blinks fast. The S/Switch mode also pairs, but macOS never detects it — each mode is a distinct Bluetooth device, so if you switch modes, forget the old pairing first. It also works over a USB cable.

The browser only sees the pad after its first button press, and only while the tab stays focused.

The center cluster is a 2×2 block: − and + on top, ★ and ♥ below. − is reserved — it's the layer cycler, same job as the LAYER key on the other pads.

Defaults on the Micro:

• Face buttons + d-pad — tags 1–8
• L / R — variants / zones (hold or tap)
• L2 — undo, on every layer
• + — play/pause
• ♥ — frame screenshot on layers 1 and 3, clips matrix on layer 2
• ★ — cancel/dismiss on layers 1 and 3, cycle layout on layer 2

While variants or zones are armed, zone picking uses the d-pad: a single direction picks an edge of the 3×3 grid, two directions chorded pick a corner, and the bottom face button picks the center.

8BitDo Arcade Stick — set the mode switch to X; the joystick works with its own toggle on D-PAD or LS (not RS). Connect over USB, the 2.4G dongle, or Bluetooth, then press any button — same as the Micro, the browser only sees the stick after that first press, with the tab focused.

The silhouette puts the joystick on the left and eight arcade buttons in two arced rows on the right (top row X Y R L, bottom row A B R2 L2), with small − / + / ♥ / ★ / P1 / P2 buttons across the top. − is reserved as the layer cycler here too.

Defaults on the Arcade Stick:

• All eight arcade buttons, in reading order (top row X Y R L, then A B R2 L2) — tags 1–8
• P1 — variant qualify (hold or tap)
• P2 — zone qualify (hold or tap)
• Stick up / down — frame step forward / back
• Stick left / right — jog
• + — play/pause
• ★ — undo, on every layer
• ♥ — frame screenshot, on every layer

Layer 1 switches to transport (frame step, speed, zoom, clip prev/next, loop, fullscreen, stats, matrix); layer 2 switches to clip operations (flags 1–4, statuses, send to collection/playlist, notes).

While variants or zones are armed, zone picking uses the stick: a single direction picks an edge, two directions chorded pick a corner, and A (the bottom face button) picks the center. Variant picks follow the same reading order as the tag buttons above, then the stick.

In the configurator, a silhouette of the pad shows the mapping for whichever profile is selected — press a physical button to select it.

Remote pad

Pair a phone or tablet as a touch tagging pad for the workspace. It connects directly to this machine over the local network (WebRTC) — once paired, nothing routes through the server.

1. Open the pad configurator: ⌥M, the Remote chip in the ? shortcuts footer, or the pad status chip in the clip log's footer.
2. The Remote pad tab is the one it opens on — select Pair a device. A QR code appears, valid for 10 minutes and single-use — buttons next to it let you open the link in a new tab, copy it, or regenerate a fresh QR.
3. Scan the QR with the device's camera (same wifi as this machine). The link also works if opened in another tab on this same machine.

Once connected, the remote shows the active deck live: tags and events in their real catalog colors and numbers (a gold dot marks entries that carry variants), toggleable Tags and Events panels, standard transport (previous clip, rewind, play/pause, forward, next clip, speed), undo and cancel, and In−/In+/Out−/Out+ trim. Until the workbench video is started in analyze mode, the remote shows a "start the video" message instead of the deck.

Tapping a tag or event stamps the clip and opens the same 8-second qualify window as the workbench's clip pill: that entity's variant chips (applied ones highlight, and picking a radio-group option clears its siblings), reactions, status stages, and — if the tag captures zones and the deck has a zone map — the same field mini-map the workbench uses, so you tap the exact zone.

The session survives page reloads and the device's screen sleeping, for around 4 hours; only the QR itself expires if it sits unclaimed for 10 minutes.

Requires a browser with WebRTC on both ends — Chrome, Edge, or Safari.

Related

• Decks & catalog
• Zone maps
• Keyboard shortcuts