AutoHotKey GUI and Commands

This project is a modified version of Public-AutoHotKey-Scripts by Asger Juul Brunshøj. Also check the original readme for more information.

Why use AHK?

Using your keyboard more and your mouse less can improve your productivity since it usually takes you much less time.

Check the following Demo: Instead of

• using your mouse to open FireFox,
• opening a new tab and
• typing www.google.com

you just press

• CAPSLOCK+SPACE (to open the GUI) and then
• g+SPACE (to select a Google Search)

(the demo below also shows the ? command that displays the available options)

Features

GUI

There are numerous other features already implemented, ready to use! Always first start the GUI with CAPSLOCK+SPACE and then choose:

• Search dialogues to quickly search across different sites (always press the key and SPACE afterwards)
  • a: Amazon
  • d: DuckDuckGo
  • g: Google
  • gs: Google Scholar
  • i: Google Images
  • l: Google I'm feeling lucky
  • m: Google Maps
  • w: Weather search
  • x: Google in Incognito mode
  • y: YouTube
  • /: Go to Sub-Reddit
• Translation (additional configuration/changes are possible)
  • teng: Translate from German to English
  • tger: Translate from English to German
• Pasting
  • strings with name, phone (can configure anything)
• Opening of folders and files
  • down: opens Downloads folder
  • f+SPACE: opens dialog for shortcuts to folders (configuration in folders.csv)
  • rec: open recycle bin
  • shortcuts: opens file containing additional application specific shortcuts
• Miscellaneous
  • date: prompts today's date
  • url: open browser and load content of clipboard (opens webpage if it is a URL, otherwise opens standard search)
  • week: prompts the current week
  • ?: overview of available commands

Shortcuts

All shortcuts (as the GUI) are triggered by the CAPSLOCK key. You can specify hot keys for applications here. For example

• CAPSLOCK + g: opens the windows file explorer
• CAPSLOCK + w: opens the MS Word
• ...

Additional shortcuts are for screen management and other stuff, for example

• CAPSLOCK + 1: Switch to the neighboring desktop on the left
• CAPSLOCK + 2: Switch to the neighboring desktop on the right
• CAPSLOCK + n: centers the mouse over the active window
• CAPSLOCK + x: closes the active application
• CAPSLOCK + c: copy current active browser tab link in Markdown format to the clipboard (currently only works with FireFox, but can be changed here)
• ...

In general, these examples are rather to give you some ideas on what is possible. If you like it, it is probably best to reconfigure those to suit your needs.

Usage

If you are new to AHK, check out the following description and short tutorial.

To get it up and running

• install AutoHotKey (AHK) version 1 (not v2 beta) and then
• execute Host.ahk (by double clicking)

Afterwards to start using it

• press CAPSLOCK + SPACE to start the GUI and enter ? to get an overview of available commands.
• Note: Since CAPSLOCK is used as a special key, its standard usage is suppressed, but can be recovered using ALT + CAPSLOCK.

If you have any issues, or if you changed some configuration, simply reload the Host.ahk file by double clicking or using the GUI with CAPSLOCK + SPACE and typing rel. In addition, consider pasting a link (.lnk file) to the Host.ahk into the Windows auto-start folder (see here for instructions) to automatically load the script on start up.

Credits

Without the great original repo, this would not have been possible, since I am not a AHK expert. In the following you find a short overview of my changes.

Original version

• very cool GUI that constitutes the heart of the application
• very quick search on several platforms (google, duckduckgo, ...)
• translation between languages
• and more features (paste strings, get week, ...)

Extension from Original

I customized the GUI commands to serve my needs, so there are substantial differences between the original version and this one. Information for further customization can be found in GUI.

In addition to that I added:

• shortcuts for programs and screen management
  • routines to open or activate (if already open) a program
  • screen management shortcuts, such as switching between desktops and moving applications across screens
• folders.csv where you can specify "keyword - folder path" pairs to open specific folders quickly from within the GUI
• routine to save the URL of the current active tab of Firefox from any application to clipboard
• a very uncomplete list of common shortcuts within certain applications I use

Miscellaneous

I hope you find it helpful and please share any errors/improvements that you spot :)

Hints for own extensions

AHK scripts use the following common notation

• ^ = CRTL
• # = WINDOWS
• + = SHIFT
• ! = ALT

Furthermore,

• ; is the comment keyword for ahk files
• when using conditional statements such as #If ..., be aware that they affect the code across files. Use an empty #If to stop this.

Inspiration

• ahkscript/awesome-AutoHotkey: A curated list of awesome AutoHotkey libraries, library distributions, scripts, tools and resources
• rcmdnk/vim_ahk: Setting file to emulate vim with AutoHotkey
• Forks of the original repo