Practical Autohotkey: Get faster at work with text expansion and automation.

by Nick May

For MacOS try TextExpander and either Automator or Keyboard Maestro.

For MacOS

For GNU/Linux there isn’t anything comparable; try AutoHotkey in Wine or xdotool.

For GNU/Linux

I like to describe AutoHotkey as the tool you never knew you were missing.

Note: Amazon won’t let you copy-paste out of the online Kindle reader; you can download the example code from my website http://www.thenickmay.com/books/practical-autohotkey/examples/

Code examples

The reference section of this book is available for reading (and copy-pasting code from) on my website (http://www.thenickmay.com/books/practical-autohotkey/reference).

Reference section

there is also a portable version of the AutoHotkey that doesn’t require administrator rights.

If you’re already feeling intimidated, there is an alternative that does much of what AutoHotkey does called PhraseExpander. It’s available at http://www.phraseexpander.com/

Phrase Expander - expensive alternative

keep trying scripts until they work. In the industry we might call this iterative development, but you can just call impatience.

The first line ^F5::reload tells AutoHotkey that when we press the Control key and the F5 key that we want to reload the current script; re-read the script file from disk and execute all of the code found in that file.

if a change breaks AutoHotkey, the old version of the script will keep running & your customized computer will keep working the way you expect. (However, if you don’t fix the script before you restart the computer it will remain broken.

if you find yourself spending a lot of time undoing changes that broke your scripts, try using a revision control system to track your changes over time. I prefer the fossil revision control system,

Fossil revision control system

type “hw” followed by a space (or Tab, or ENTER)

Text expansion keys

AutoHotkey isn’t a normal programming language; it’s a series of useful kludges, instead of a cohesively designed system.

See ‘AutoHotkey v2’ for the efforts to re-write the language as something cohesive, with a consistent design. The list of changes is most interesting: https://autohotkey.com/v2/v2-changes.htm. This version is not ready for use; use at your own risk, it may change at any time.

AutoHotkey v2

::hw::Hello World{!} ; Example 5

Use {} to type ! with AutoHotkey

If we want to bypass that and have AutoHotkey expand as soon as there is some matching text, we can do that easily, using an asterisk: :*:hi::Hi, I'm expanding this text using AutoHotkey and doing so RIGHT AWAY{!}

Add * to prevent usage of ending characters for text expansion

If you want AutoHotkey to expand abbreviations even when that abbreviation is found within another word, use a question mark: :?:hi::Hi, I'm gonna expand *even in the middle of a word*{!}

Such as 'hi' in 'sushi'

If you’re interested in this kind of expansion your best bet is probably combining the asterisk and question mark operators so you have immediate expansion, no matter where you are: :?*:hi::Hello{!} I'm going to expand no matter what{!}

? and *

One way to work around a hotstring that gets in your way (and the only way I was able to type up this section with all of these hotstrings enabled for testing) is to use the arrow keys while typing to interrupt the flow of characters that AutoHotkey sees.

Use arrow keys to prevent automatic expansion

::td:: SendInput %A_YYYY%-%A_MM%-%A_DD% return

td ~~> current date

Including the ever-difficult em dash: :*:---::{ASC 0151}

Typing em-dash

!>::SendInput {U+2265} ; Example 18: alt > sends greater-than-or-equal-to

Unicode example

AppsKey::Capslock ; retain ability to use CapsLock via the key between RAlt and RCtrl,

F12::Capslock ; retain ability to use CapsLock - press F12 to toggle Caps Lock on and off,

Remapping keys

maybe you’ll write a function that hides all your browser windows, and brings up your e-mail when the boss drops by to chat.

Good idea ;)

#w::run https://weather.com/

Windows key + w ~~> opens website

#n::run notepad.exe

Open specific program

windows (#) ctrl (^) alt (!) shift (+)

Popular keys

WinHide, <title of window>

Later, use WinShow to show the window (otherwise it's lost)

WinHide example

We need to include the ‘return’ keyword so that the script stops at that point, otherwise it will continue executing the next line and the next until it hits a ‘return’ keyword (or the end of the script file, whichever comes first).

Use of "return"

SetTitleMatchMode, 2 ;; window's title can contain WinTitle anywhere inside to match

Good tip

SetTitleMatchMode 2 F4:: { ifWinNotActive, Notepad { WinShow, Notepad } else { WinHide, Notepad } } return

Use F4 to show/hide all Notepad windows. When the window is hidden, and you type, the text will still be saved in Notepad.

it doesn’t matter if Outlook is already running, if it’s minimized, if it’s on a different desktop, or if it isn’t running at all — pressing F3 on my keyboard will always make Outlook appear.

Check the code of Example 28 (below)

almost every key that has multiple version on the keyboard can be specified to be the left or the right version of the key - eg the left or right Control key: {LControl} or {LCtrl} or {RControl}

if you’re SENDing a key, you can generally refer to it as {KeyName}, but if you’re using it as a trigger itself, just use KeyName, without the braces.

You almost always want to use the SendInput command rather than the Send command. It is a little slower, but is much more intelligent

Launch Outlook ‘New E-mail’ window. F3::run Outlook.exe /c ipm.note

New e-mail

Launch Outlook Calendar window. F2::run Outlook.exe /select outlook:calendar

Calendar

Launch your web browser of choice with a new tab Chrome F6::run chrome.exe www.example.com

Launch your web browser with a specific page in a new window Chrome F6::run chrome.exe /new-window www.example.com