When it comes to desk accessories that speed up my work and keep me in my flow, they come few and far between — primarily because I can be rather picky and very stubborn. (My fiancée has a lot to say about the latter.) Keeping things traditional, I’m used to remembering keyboard shortcuts and keeping my tasks jotted down with pen and paper.
But then I got the chance to test out the Loupedeck Live S — a 5 x 3 controller with touchscreen buttons that’s primarily meant to be for live streaming — and it has changed everything. In fact, I would argue that the Loupedeck Live S is just as important of a peripheral as my keyboard and mouse for getting things done.
Let me loupe you in
At first, I was ambivalent to this Elgato Stream Deck-alike. (All of the Loupedeck Live S marketing materials focus on how you can quickly control a Twitch stream.) As the headline says, I don’t stream. But the Loupedeck's real superpower comes in your day-to-day productivity — courtesy of the marketplace.
Here, you’ve got more than 250 profiles, plugins, icon packs and more to make the Loupedeck work for you. If you don’t find what you want, there is the option to create your own shortcuts, but chances are you’ll find the apps you use have already been supported.
You see, Loupedeck has a ton of custom-built shortcut profiles across all the most used apps from Chrome to Zoom, Final Cut Pro to Photoshop, and everything in between. In Adobe’s app, I have my Camera Raw Filter preset ready to go at the press of a button, alongside the dial to adjust brush size for a quick sharpening around the edges. This made what would be a 10 to 15 minute job into something that takes 2 minutes.
Multi-purpose
Not only that, but the Live S identifies what app is open at any time and changes the controls you see. And on top of that, you can combine some key actions into your main profile that appears when you’re on the desktop.
For example, I have a button that takes me straight into the Computing slack channel to talk to my team, website shortcuts to open a new Google Doc and Tom’s Guides website backend, and even play my LoFi playlist on Spotify for ultimate focus.
In standalone profiles for each app, you can get into the nitty gritty as you saw above. (Also, shout-out to the auto color grading shortcut button when using the Live S with Final Cut Pro.) But there’s some ultra speedy magic that comes when you bring it all together.
So while the Loupedeck Live S may be hyped up for the streamers (which it is good for), the real strength comes in how it literally speeds up your work. This is the desk gadget I can't live without.
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