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Keys, Knobs and Displays

Each item has a Placement setting in its Macro Pad section, which decides which part of the device it uses. The section is only shown once the enclosing menu is bound to a pad.

Placement​

  • Automatic — knob items go to the dials and are also mirrored onto the LCD strip; everything else goes to the keys.
  • LCD Keys — always a key.
  • Dials / Knobs — bound to a dial only, not mirrored onto the strip. Use this when you want the strip entirely to yourself.
  • LCD Strip — placed on the strip, in addition to any mirrored knobs.
  • Buttons Without Display — placed on the pad's plain physical buttons, such as the 8 round buttons of a Loupedeck. See below.

Size and position​

Items are rendered at the size you set (Item Size), with their margins included. On the LCD strip items are packed left to right: the second item starts exactly where the first ends, so sizes and margins alone decide the layout.

There is no automatic scaling — what you set is what the device shows. An item wider than its key will extend past it, which you can use deliberately for edge-to-edge artwork.

Row breakers​

A Row Breaker item makes the next item start on a new row of the key grid. Use it to group keys without padding the gaps with empty dummy items.

It only ever affects items that come after it, which means it quietly does nothing in the cases where you wouldn't want it to:

  • at the very end of your key items — so a breaker you added purely to separate the keys from the knob items in the on-screen menu changes nothing on the device;
  • at the very start;
  • when the next free key already begins a row;
  • directly after another breaker, so you never get a surprise blank row.

Column Breakers have no equivalent on a fixed key grid and are ignored. Row breakers are also ignored on Stream Decks driven through the Stream Deck plugin, since there is no physical grid in that mode.

Knobs​

Add a Knob item and place it on the dials. Knob items have their own action categories:

  • Actions Executed On Rotate Left / Right
  • Actions Executed On Rotate Left / Right (While Pressed) — hold the knob down while turning for a second layer
  • Actions Executed On Knob Tap / Click, and on knob press down / up

A knob can show a value as a gauge (fixed range) or as an endless dial, and its gauge follows the physical knob live when it's shown on a strip.

Note that pressing and turning at the same time is treated as one gesture: the tap action does not also fire.

Buttons and knobs without a display​

Some pads have plain buttons or knobs with no screen. They work exactly like other items — they simply can't show anything.

To put an item on one, set its placement to Buttons Without Display. Items with that placement fill the pad's display-less buttons in the normal item order, so the order of those items decides which physical button each one gets.

On Loupedeck and Razer Stream Controller devices the 8 round buttons have a colour LED rather than a display, so an item placed on one lights it in that item's own colour. It's not a picture, but it is visual feedback.

On pads with only a few plain buttons (such as the AKP03 and M18), those buttons also still pick up ordinary items automatically once the keys with displays are full — the placement above simply lets you target them on purpose instead.

Side strips​

Some devices have narrow display strips beside the keys instead of one wide strip below them — the AKP153 has one down the side, Loupedeck devices have one on each side. Place items on them with the LCD Strip placement. Items fill the strips in item order, top to bottom; on Loupedeck the left strip fills before the right one.

Unlike a wide touch strip, side strips are laid out in fixed segments that line up with the key rows next to them.

Paging​

If a menu has more key items than the device has keys, the last two keys that have a display become previous/next page controls, and they only appear when there is somewhere to go.

To style paging yourself, add an item and set Macro Pad Navigation to Previous Page, Next Page or Back. Such an item is styled like any other item and replaces the default chevron. A Back Button item is used automatically as the back control inside submenus.

On devices with a touch strip you can also swipe left and right to change pages.

A submenu item opens on the device, and a back control returns from it — the same structure you use in an on-screen menu.