Elgato Stream Deck

What hackers pick instead

• Codex MicroRecommended mainly for its looks, colors and status lights, and as a collectible or novelty; critics call it overpriced at $230 and a gimmick without a microphone or speaker.13recommend
• Griffin PowerMateA USB dial people use as a fidget toy or synth controller. Caveat: it may not start after restart.6recommend

Every quote

The 19 most detailed of 22 comments. Each links to the original.

1. I own 3 stream decks, and they are incredibly useful. Not only for coding, but windows controlling, shortcuts for anything.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Codex Micro”

2. I have a stream deck that touches my keyboard so that I can quickly press a button

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Get Ready for Touch on Mac”

3. its a good bit cheaper and each button has a little screen on it

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Codex Micro”

4. It saves about 1 second, but really makes a huge difference.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Good Tools Are Invisible”

5. The Stream Deck can easily be used without looking.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”

6. $130, with LCD sceens, works with any apps

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Codex Micro”

7. so it feels mostly handsoff the keyboard

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Show HN: Free Alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue”

8. the stream deck is popular for a reason

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”

9. StreamDeck exists for a reason

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons”

10. the current software did not work as spected

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Which tools do Claude, Codex and Cursor choose? We measured 17k runs to find out”

11. replacement for the bloated StreamDeck app

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)”

12. highly underrated as a programmable physical interface imho, great use case

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “My chief of staff, Claude Code”

13. You can get a lot done with two buttons.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: Ghost Pepper – 100% local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS”

14. my old Elgato Stream Deck

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Codex Micro”

15. failing to see why someone would want this instead of just hitting a terminal command

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “My chief of staff, Claude Code”

16. renders the macro buttons as one big canvas only drag-and-drop interacts with

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps”

17. For streaming (pcpanel, streamdeck, avermedia cards) is bad

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great”

18. I guess there's a niche ie. Stream Deck (also overpriced)

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Terpstra Keyboard”

19. I stopped using it after a few days.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Codex Micro”