A
while ago I wanted to find a way to create
keyboard short-cuts that weren't available out of the box
for my windows PC. Looking around, I came by AutoHotKey (AHK) which
seems to not only allow for keyboard short-cuts, but much more. AHK allows
you to control all sorts of things on your PC, be it through keyboard
inputs, or through scripts running on your machine that pick up changes on the
PC to be used in any way you like.
AutoHotKey
can be downloaded here:
After
installation it is a simple matter of right clicking a script file and
selecting “compile script” to create an executable from it.
The
main reason I started using AHK was for helping me use my harmony universal
remote to control my PC, and mainly, to use it to open and control my PLEX
client. More on this can be found here:
This
brings me to my first script, which was naturally, opening the PLEX
home theater:
This
one uses a SHIFT+ALT+F10 key combination to open the file in:
“C:\Program
Files (x86)\Plex Home Theater\Plex Home Theater.exe”, if the PLEX Home Theater
executable isn't already running.
Here
are the rest of the scripts I've written since then:
KeyPad-Letters:
This had to do with my problem finding a way to enter letters in the PLEX
search box from my remote, which had only a numpad.
So,
with the help of this script, I essentially created a phone-like numpad. The
script sends letters while pressing the number buttons of the remote repeatedly
like you usually do on the TV or older phones with no keyboard.
So,
for instance, if I want to write abg3 I'll be able to do that with
the remote by: pressing 2, wait a second (or press Alt-Shift-F8), pressing
2 twice, pressing 4 once, pressing 3 four times.
the
Keypad-Letters script can be found at:
This
script also uses Alt-Shift-F8 (which I mapped through FLIRC, as explained
in the other blog post I mentioned earlier) to stop the 1 second timer so that
you could write other characters from the same number immediately without
having to wait a second between each letter.
Close
Display: By far my most used keyboard short-cut, this one uses WIN-q to
close my PC’s display screen just as it would when the computer usually goes to
sleep or shuts down. This is extremely useful when you've left your PC for a
little while, and don’t want it to go to sleep or shut down. It saves power
used by the display, and also protects it from being “burned” if your
screen-saver takes a while to start. In general, it makes me feel better
knowing that my display isn't sitting there waiting for someone who is not
around.
Change
Resolution: This script uses WIN-w to immediately set your current display
to use a resolution of 1920 x 1200 (which is what my PC display should be
using). This was useful to me when using PLEX, as it was run on my 1080p TV,
and would sometimes keep my other display in this same resolution after I
closed PLEX.
Change
PC volume by resolution: This script listens to a resolution
change event from the windows operating system, and sets the PC’s volume
accordingly. As it happened, the volume I heard on my PC’s headphones was much
louder than that heard from my other audio output to my receiver, which was
used when watching PLEX on my 1080p TV. Instead of always increasing the volume
manually, I created this script to automatically change the volume when my
resolution was set to 1080p (which automatically happens when starting PLEX in
my case).
One
script to include them all (and in a single
executable run them):
In
order to run all these scripts together, and not as separate executables, I
created one other script which essentially includes all the rest. This is
simply done by creating another AHK script file that has this:
#Include
c:\full\path\to\ahk\script\file\to\be\included.ahk
And
to finish this whole thing off, I’ll give you a small tip on how to run
scripts that need admin rights. Sometimes, you want a keyboard shortcut
in AHK to run a program that needs admin rights. Instead of having to authorize
to use it with admin rights every time you run the keyboard shortcut for it,
you could run a VBS script that would require the admin rights only once (on
startup for instance). After doing it once, it will keep those rights as long
as it runs. Saving you unnecessary clicks and hassles. Of course, be wary not
to give your admin rights away to any third party executable you know
nothing about.
Just
create a file with a “vbs” extension, such as ahk_scripts.vbs and add these
lines:
Set
UAC = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
UAC.ShellExecute
" c:\full\path\to\ahk\executable\to\run\with\admin\rights.exe",
"", "", "runas", 1
As
you can see, AHK lets you have a lot more power over your PC. Almost anything
you want to do with your PC has a way to do it, and I hope the examples above
will give you a few good tools to start building the scripts you need.
