Molowa Palua Makes Shortcuts for the Mac

August 2, 2011 in Apps, General by Daniel

We’re all familiar with the F-buttons at the top of our Mac keyboard. Each one, F1 through F12, controls a different action including screen brightness, volume and Dashboard/Expose.

When the function, or “fn” key is pressed on the keyboard, the F-keys perform a secondary action that is set in system preferences.

Gaming or certain editing software often requires different functionality from the F-keys. Pressing the “fn” key during a high intensity game is often a pain. Going into system preferences every time you wish to play the game to switch the primary role of the F-keys is also time consuming.

To solve this problem, app developers Molowa have created a simple, elegant app named Palua.

Palua is a system-wide app that allows you to switch between standard Apple F-key functionality and your own custom settings. The application has a menu bar icon. When pressed, the icon drops down, allowing you to switch between the Apple standard mode and the F-keys secondary functionality.

Paula works well with most standard Mac keyboards.

If the app performs inadequately on your model, plugging in a second keyboard usually does the trick.

Simple to set up and use, at under a dollar this little app packs quite the wallop.