AutoHotKey

7 October 2018

Note from Dan from the future (2021): This was relevant my previous job. I now have a new workflow but I would like to leave this online.

I'm a big fan of Autohotkey. I use it every single day, both at home and at work. It's been a great way for me to think up ways I can make my own life easier. I have two different scripts, one for home and one for work.

What My Scripts Have In Common

Numpad4+Numpad5 opens up the script for editing, so that I can make little changes.

CTRL+ALT+R reloads the script. This is a game changer since when my script syncs on Dropbox and I see the notification, I just do this shortcut and I instantly have the newest changes availible to use.

CapsLock is disabled, much to the annoyance of the people around me when they use my computer. I have tried for some time to get out of the habit of using CapsLock and in the end, disabling it was the only way to force myself to do it. This has actually opened up combinations with CapsLock, which has been very useful. I have more shortcuts that are easy to access now.

My Home Script

My home script is stored on Dropbox. The reason for this is I use it on more than one computer and I often make little changes, which I want to sync to my other computers rather than have slightly different versions littered everywhere. I also use a program called Link Shell Extension so that I can symlink my script in Windows.

I reserve / and * on my numpad as I have hotkeys setup on Teamspeak and I wouldn't want them to clash.

Some of the things I do with my Home Script is typing shortcuts, launching programs and running scripts.

Typing Shortcuts

@dp types my email address, #dp types my phone number. I have a system for shortcuts. @ means email, # means phone number, - means web URL, ! means command and / means plain text. I created a system mainly to make things easy to remember, but also as a standard that other people can use if they desire.

Launching Programs

#`::
   Run, "C:\Windows\System32\bash.exe" ~
Return

Launches a command prompt to the Linux subsystem when I hit Winkey+Tilde.

Running Scripts

An example of a script I run is:

~9 & 0::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen
MouseMove, A_ScreenWidth/2, A_ScreenHeight/2, 0
Return

Which when I hit 9+0 (not on the Numpad), will move my mouse cursor to the middle of my monitor. This is very useful at work where I have 3x1080p monitors to lose my cursor in.