This is a quick announcement for anyone who read my MS Sculpt Keyboard posts. I’ve been made aware ControllerMate does not work with Catalina in current version. Unfortunately, circumstances surrounding the app seem to suggest the developers either do not have a specific time table to support Catalina or do not plan to support Catalina.

There are two options for ControllerMate-only users: a. use Karabiner for the time being or b. postponing upgrade to Catalina. Karabiner is a superb application but with a caveat; it cannot grab non-standard keys, such as a calculator key. And personally, I cannot recommend postponing a major upgrade for an application with no time table to support a new OS. Unless your computer runs on specific environment which primarily runs only that application, it is better to simply look for an alternative app.

It took roughly 11 months for Karabiner to release a stable version when major kernel changes took place in Sierra. Given the fact that Karabiner was able to jumpstart the process with a beta version in hand, —i.e. there was a working beta version of Karabiner always available— I cannot say the same with ControllerMate. The website has not been updated since 2018. This commercial software is also written with larger scope in mind, meaning potentially developing from ground up will be a hardship.