No pads free? Use the keys you're typing on.

On the canvas from This Mac

The Devices sidebar has a This Mac section with one row, Computer Keyboard. Click its + to add the card; a tick shows it's already on the canvas. Add Input › This Mac › Computer Keyboard does the same.

The Mac has one keyboard, so each scene has one card, and every scene that has one shares it. Each scene keeps its own cables, though: the keys do whatever the scene that's playing says.

Learn a key

Drag from the card's round teal jack to a card's action row, click Learn in the cable's inspector and press a key. Learn All fills the presses one after another, and Escape cancels.

It doesn't play notes. It presses things, the way a pad would: swap the Channel Swapper to a channel, mute one on the Channel Mute, latch the arpeggiator, fire a drum fill, or switch an effect, a sequencer or an input on and off. Toggle and Hold work too: hold a key for strings, let go for the piano.

One key learned shows on the cable as a keycap, several as "3 keys". A key does one job; learning it again for another row offers to Replace, as with pads.

Keys the app keeps

Some keys already do something on the canvas, so Learn refuses them and says why: Space is Play, the arrows and number keys work the selected card, F queues a drum fill. Escape, Delete, Tab and Return keep their usual jobs, and − stays with the canvas.

Everything else is free: letters, punctuation, the function keys and the whole numeric keypad, its Enter and − included. A keypad key is its own key, so Keypad 2 isn't the 2 on the top row.

Only while it's in front

Keys count while MIDI Noodle is the app in front, and never while you're typing in a field. Anything with ⌘, ⌃ or ⌥ held is left alone, so menu shortcuts still work, and the keys are read inside the app: no Input Monitoring permission to grant.

A learned key is used up. Nothing else in the app sees it, its auto-repeat goes nowhere, and switching to another app lets go of any key still held, so a Hold never gets stuck on.

It lights when it presses

The card counts the keys it has learned and shows the last one it pressed as a keycap. Each press lights it teal for a moment, like an input's activity light. Minimized to a square, its icon lights the same way.