DonationCoder.com Forum
Other Software => Announce Your Software/Service/Product => Topic started by: tranglos on May 05, 2009, 11:38 AM
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On several occasions there have been requests for a program that displays what global keyboard shortcuts are registered by various applications. ActiveHotkeys does just that: it will show a list of all active (registered) or inactive (available) global hotkeys.
New (February 2012): ActiveHotkeys is now hosted on my site at tranglos.com (http://www.tranglos.com/activehotkeys/). This thread is still good for support and new version info, I'm not going anywhere :-)
A standard installer and a portable version are now available. Latest version direct download:
- standard installer (http://www.tranglos.com/dl/activehotkeyssetup.exe)
- portable version (http://www.tranglos.com/dl/activehotkeysportable.zip) (zip file)
Please note that Windows does not allow for detecting which application has registered a particular shortcut, so that feaure is not included. (If you think you know how to achieve that, using message hooks or what-not, please post here or earn some karma at StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/829007/find-out-what-process-registered-a-global-hotkey-windows-api))
Main screen:
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(Yes, I've used the dreaded listview (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=18067.0). It's almost OK for this purpose, though not quite. The upside is you can sort the listing by clicking the column headers.)
Remember to right-click everywhere:
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Happy shortcutting!
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So that it's easy to find, here's the contents of the (original) readme file. Please let me know if you need more info or anything isn't quite clear.
Ethervane ActiveHotkeys
Requirements: Windows 95 / 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / Vista or later
License: Freeware.
--- description ---
ActiveHotkeys detects what global keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) are currently registered on the computer by various applications. This helps you determine which hotkeys are in use, and which are still available.
See the "History" section for what's new in this release.
--- installation ---
No need to install. Just unpack the executable (activehotkeys.exe) to any directory. You can create a Start menu shortcut for the program manually.
The program does not store any data in the registry. Configuration is saved in the following folder (Windows XP):
c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Ethervane\ActiveHotkeys\
--- features ---
Supports all possible combinations of Alt, Ctrl, Shift and Win keys with regular typewriter keys.
Results can be sorted and filtered to show all possible hotkeys or only currently active hotkeys (those registered by various applications in the system).
Program displays total counts of existing, inactive and currently active hotkeys.
Results can be copied to clipboard or saved to file. Results are copied and saved as tab-delimited format, which can be imported into a spreadsheet.
Settings are saved between sessions.
--- usage ---
1. At the top-left of the screen, under "Select modifier keys", select checkboxes for the modifier keys or chords which you want to test. For example, if you are only interested in shortcuts including the Windows key, select Win, Alt+Win, Ctrl+Win and Shift+Win.
You can right-click this area for additional handy commands. There are commands to select all modifier key combinations, clear all selections, as well as to select all the single key modifiers or 2-, 3- and 4-key chords.
2. Below the top area, under "Select normal key groups", select checkboxes for the key groups you want to test. For example, you may want to test only the alphabetic keys, only numbers, or a combination of the available groups. These selections allow you to limit the number of results, so that finding a particular key is easier.
Right-click this area for additional commands to select all key groups or clear all selections.
Hint: Click the "Key groups" tab to find out what keys are included in each group.
3. Click the "Test active hotkeys" button at the bottom of the screen, or press F9. Results will be displayed in the main pane.
Right-click the listing of results for additional commands:
- Select all results
- Copy selected results to clipboard
- Save selected results to file
- Toggle between showing all results, or only the active (currently registered) hotkeys.
--- limitations ---
Windows does not provide information about what program registered a particular global hotkey. Therefore this information is not available through ActiveHotkeys either.
--- download ---
Currently the program is only available via DonationCoder website: www.donationcoder.com
--- support ---
Email the author at [email protected] if you encounter a problem.
--- distribution ---
The program is free to download and use. Written permission from the author is required to bundle, repackage or redistribute the program.
--- history ---
Version 1.1.0: 2009-05-09
- Added support for multimedia and browser keys that some keyboards have. Typically, these keys will be shown as inactive, even though they "work". That is because the operating system does not register these keys as hotkeys with itself. However, some applications (e.g. Winamp), can register these keys, and then you'll see them listed as active.
- The "Show only active keys" option has been replaced with a three-way toggle: Show all, Show only active keys, and Show only inactive keys. The F5 key now cycles through these three options.
- Added an option to display gridlines in the hotkey view (Ctrl+G).
- Added support for the following two command-line switches:
/localconfig : AH will write its configuration files in the directory where it is installed.
/nowriteconfig : AH will read its configuration files normally, but will not write back any changes.
- fixed a bug where AH displayed an error message if the "Test active hotkeys" button was clicked while the Key groups or About tab was visible.
- Small cosmetic changes.
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Thanks Tranglos!
It's really nice to be able to see which keys are available - very convenient for planning hotkeys :up:
No idea who's using a lot of those keys :-\ afraid to try them out, god knows what would happen ... :)
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Thanks Tranglos!
No idea who's using a lot of those keys :-\ afraid to try them out, god knows what would happen ... :)
-tomos
That was my thought too when I first ran the program! I found some long-forgotten hotkeys that reside in my AutoHotkey scripts, but also a bunch of shortcuts I don't recall ever having defined.
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Hi
I do not think it is working properly under xp64, I am getting very veyr mixed results?
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Unfortunately I can't test under x64; no-one I know round here uses a 64-bit system. Can you describe what happens?
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Great work! Very useful tool!
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Great stuff!!! Thank you for sharing with us :up:
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what's going on, Marek?! You're unleashing programs on us like rain! Awesome! How long has this been in the works?
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Sweet, thanks.
--- limitations ---
Windows does not provide information about what program registered a particular global hotkey. Therefore this information is not available through ActiveHotkeys either.
You might add a button to start a scan for such programs? If that's too far off-piste, then this is a handy companion tool :-
http://www.zealsoftstudio.com/shortcuts/ (http://www.zealsoftstudio.com/shortcuts/)
Shortcuts Map
Version 2.3 Release Date: April 8, 2004
Platform: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003
Shortcuts Map will help you to manage hotkeys assigned to Windows shortcuts on the desktop or in the Start menu hierarchy. With the straightforward user interface, you can easily to change a hotkey or find an unused hotkey.
http://www.zealsoftstudio.com/shortcuts/shtsnap.gif
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Up to now I've used ShortcutsMan (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shman.html) by Nir Sofer. It will be interesting to compare tranglos' program.
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Nice! :Thmbsup:
It's speedy and the presentation (even the list view) looks good.
A couple of comments/suggestions:
1) Consider renaming the Active Hotkeys tab or having separate tabs for Active and Inactive hotkeys. I was a bit confused when seeing inactive hotkeys listed on the active hotkeys tab until I found the Show Active Only option.
2) While selecting the modifiers and key groups before scanning allows you to scan for less shortcuts, checking everything didn't seem to take that long. It might be more useful if you just scanned for everything and then allowed the user to filter the results based on selected modifiers and key groups.
2a) Extending that a bit it would be nice if the user could filter it even further by somehow entering keys. Say I wanted all shortcuts that use F1, I could sort the list, but I think a filter would be better.
3) While you cannot determine the program associated with the hotkey, you could allow the some user entered data. In particular, if you allowed the user to group hotkeys, enter the program they are associated with, and maybe a small note of what they did, it would become so much more useful. Obviously, it would fall on the user to ensure this data is updated and accurate. Granted, you'd probably have to replace the list view to do this cleanly, but with such a feature it would turn the program into something I might even consider purchasing for a small fee.
Keep up the good work!
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2) While selecting the modifiers and key groups before scanning allows you to scan for less shortcuts, checking everything didn't seem to take that long. It might be more useful if you just scanned for everything and then allowed the user to filter the results based on selected modifiers and key groups.
-TheQwerty
in the panel on the left it would be good to have an 'All' tick-box as well as the 'None' one
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in the panel on the left it would be good to have an 'All' tick-box as well as the 'None' one
-tomos
Actually, that's not what "None" means. None doesn't deselect all modifier options. Rather, it means "test all hotkeys whish do not use ANY modifier" - a relatively rare case, but it will come up with the Pause key (registered by FARR) for example. There is another program whose name I forget that uses CapsLock by itself to pop up its window. (Perhaps I should rename that checkbox to "no modifier" instead.)
So, by extension, adding "All" would not mean "all possible combinations of modifiers". It would mean "hotkeys that use all modifier keys", i.e. Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Win - and there is already a checkbox for that.
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what's going on, Marek?! You're unleashing programs on us like rain! Awesome! How long has this been in the works?
-superboyac
The hotkey app is very new, took three nights to write just this week, but of course there are all kinds of improvements left out.
The timer I wrote a few months ago, where a client wanted me to report the time spent on particular phases of a project. I was looking specifically for a timer program that would suspend when I stopped using the keyboard, and I couldn't find anything like that.
In both cases it was the perfect motivation - scratch your own itch. That's how Linux came to be, too :)
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Sweet, thanks.
You might add a button to start a scan for such programs?
-DonationCoderTransmit
I'm not sure what you mean. There is nothing to scan for, as there is no standard manner in which programs store information about the hotkeys. It depends on how and where programs keep their configuration data: in the registry, in ini files, in xml files (at various locations). Then there are programs with hard-coded hotkeys, which are not configurable, so not stored anywahere, either.
The shortcut map program you referred to does the only thing that's possible - it scans the shortcuts in the Start menu. I's probably not a very well-known Windows feature, whereby you can assign a hotkey to each .lnk shortcut, so that you can start the program without clicking the link in the Start menu. That's detectable, because the hotkeys are stored inside the shortcut (lnk) files, and I'll see if I can add this to my program.
However, this is only a very narrow use of hotkeys, and it will do nothing about all the applications that register global hotkeys at runtime to perform various functions, e.g. when you press Pause to bring up Find and Run Robot, or PrintScreen to activate a screenshot application, etc.
For those - most common - cases, there is no way to find out which app "owns" a hotkey. I've posted a question at StackOverflow, so if it's possible, someone is likely to reply - but there are no replies so far. In general, it seems impossible to extract the necessary information from Windows; that possibility was simply not built into the system.
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Great ideas all, thanks!
1) Consider renaming the Active Hotkeys tab or having separate tabs for Active and Inactive hotkeys. I was a bit confused when seeing inactive hotkeys listed on the active hotkeys tab until I found the Show Active Only option.
-TheQwerty
You are right, I'll rename it. I don't want to use separate tabs though. For now you can right-click and check the option to only display the active hotkeys. At the very least I should add the opposite option, to only show inactive ones.
2) While selecting the modifiers and key groups before scanning allows you to scan for less shortcuts, checking everything didn't seem to take that long. It might be more useful if you just scanned for everything and then allowed the user to filter the results based on selected modifiers and key groups.
-TheQwerty
The UI for filtering is already there (hidden), but filtering itself isn't implemented yet.
2a) Extending that a bit it would be nice if the user could filter it even further by somehow entering keys. Say I wanted all shortcuts that use F1, I could sort the list, but I think a filter would be better.
-TheQwerty
This definitely needs to be a part of the filter, yes.
3) While you cannot determine the program associated with the hotkey, you could allow the some user entered data. In particular, if you allowed the user to group hotkeys, enter the program they are associated with, and maybe a small note of what they did, it would become so much more useful. Obviously, it would fall on the user to ensure this data is updated and accurate. Granted, you'd probably have to replace the list view to do this cleanly, but with such a feature it would turn the program into something I might even consider purchasing for a small fee.
-TheQwerty
I love this idea, thanks again. Now that I think about it, I can detect the hotkeys defined in lnk shortcuts (see my reply to DonationCoderTransmit above), and can have a built-in map of well-known Windows hotkeys (Win+R, Win+E, etc). THat would be a start. The rest, as you say, could be filled in by users.
Too bad we cannot have a shareable list of such hotkeys, since in most apps thay are configurable, and will be different for everyone. FARR uses Pause, for example, but there is no guarantee that Pause is mapped to FARR on any particular system.
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This looks like a handy program! Thanks tranglos :Thmbsup:
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Excellent ! Thanks, I have been looking for this for quite some time...
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Very nice.
Can you put the .ini files in the ActiveHotkeys folder?
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Very nice.
Can you put the .ini files in the ActiveHotkeys folder?
-PhilB66
Yes, I'll add that in the next release.
It's not always a good idea though. Under XP, Vista or later, it will only work if you log in as administrator (in fact, I don't think it will work at all under Vista). In XP programs are prohibited from writing any data under c:\Program files if the current user does not have administrator permissions. Under Vista, as far as I understand, writing data under that directory is completely prohibited (Windows really saves the files elsewhere and only pretends to the user and the programs that the directory is c:\Program files. I forget what this feature is called, but I've read it was giving people trouble).
If you want to store the ini files in the folder where the program is installed, do not install it under the Program Filesas folder.
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So yeah i featured your app in my blog, nice program btw.
http://elitefreeware.blogspot.com/2009/05/see-which-global-hotkeys-are-active-in.html
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also featured now in ghacks and freewaregenius :huh: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/05/06/display-all-active-windows-hotkeys/
http://www.freewaregenius.com/2009/05/06/activehotkeys-reveals-used-hotkeys-on-your-system/
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And now lifehacker:
http://lifehacker.com/5243959/activehotkeys-shows-you-which-keys-are-available
Congratulations Tranglos.. you still got it. :up:
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Congratulations Tranglos.. you still got it. :up:
-mouser
Thanks, mouser, but it's not just the program - it's the exposure DonationCoder gives! Seems like the major software bloggers are reading DC for picks. It's your work that did that.
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Very useful. :-*
One suggestion: How about capturing which programs have which active hot keys, by having the program capture this whenever programs come to the fore, eg, by a delta with previous active keys. Put the program path in a new column, "Path", but if there is already an entry in "Path", then create a new entry for the key(s) with the new Path filled. This would be in addition to the Notes.
This would naturally be incomplete, as current apps will shadow new apps, but over time, could approach a complete picture.
:Thmbsup: tOM
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Thanks - nice little tool.
Request: Is there any way to identify the application that registered the keys in use?
Bug: If the "About" tab is open when you click "Test Active Hotkeys" you get an error. You need to force it to open the Active Hotkeys tab before attempting to test.
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Request: Is there any way to identify the application that registered the keys in use?
-Carol Haynes
Alas, no, it doesn't seem possible under Windows. There is no API for that. Maybe if you're a deep hard core API hacker it's possible, but I doubt, since even at StackOverflow no-one seems to have an answer (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/829007/find-out-what-process-registered-a-global-hotkey-windows-api).
Bug: If the "About" tab is open when you click "Test Active Hotkeys" you get an error. You need to force it to open the Active Hotkeys tab before attempting to test.
-Carol Haynes
Thanks, you're right. I'll post a fix. (I wanted to add a couple of features first, but this is an ugly error message, so I'd better not wait til then.)
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also featured now in ghacks and freewaregenius :huh: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/05/06/display-all-active-windows-hotkeys/
-mouser
Ouch, did you see the screenshot under Vista?
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I hate theming - it's only human to hate what I can't understand :) The application is themed, but I had to set the blue color for the checkbox groups manually, since by default they used clWindow, which was ugly. So now under Vista the color I set manually clashes horribly with the OS theme. Just great! :o
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Can you put the .ini files in the ActiveHotkeys folder?
-PhilB66
Done - please download the latest version (1.1.0). This is still a non-default setting, so you will need to use the /localconfig switch on the command line (you can add it to the Start menu shortcut used to launch AH).
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Bug: If the "About" tab is open when you click "Test Active Hotkeys" you get an error. You need to force it to open the Active Hotkeys tab before attempting to test.
-Carol Haynes
Fixed in the new release (1.1.0)
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- Added support for multimedia and browser keys that some keyboards have. Typically, these keys will be shown as inactive, even though they "work". That is because the operating system does not register these keys as hotkeys with itself. However, some applications (e.g. Winamp), can register these keys, and then you'll see them listed as active.
- The "Show only active keys" option has been replaced with a three-way toggle: Show all, Show only active keys, and Show only inactive keys. The F5 key now cycles through these three options.
...and more (see the History section in the Readme post)
Download links at the bottom here and in the top post.
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If one *wanted* to discover what applications the hotkeys belonged to.. you could have a special mode that starting closing/killing applications and watching which hotkey assignments were released, and keeping that on record.
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If one *wanted* to discover what applications the hotkeys belonged to.. you could have a special mode that starting closing/killing applications and watching which hotkey assignments were released, and keeping that on record.
-mouser
I've been thinking about that, yes. I could include a "comparison" mode, where you would run the test twice and compare results. That will take a while though, since for such a feature to work well I need to drop the listview and use a more powerful control, a grid maybe, where I could filter lines and mark them with color (like file comparison apps do).
That would still not help with hotkeys defined by Windows (Win+E, Win+R, etc.) - though these are pretty much standard - or with hotkeys registered by apps that start with the system and aren't easy to shut down, such as various firewalls and a/v programs. It's definitely worth a try though.
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It's definitely worth a try though.
i don't know if it really is.. but it's at least worth thinking about.
i mean there may still actually be a way to investigate the memory used by windows system and find out directly which programs have registered which global hotkeys, though obviously not easily. i wouldn't start implementing this other method just yet -- but at least it's something to consider for the future.
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It's definitely worth a try though.
i don't know if it really is.. but it's at least worth thinking about.
-mouser
I forgot to add (though it's almost obvious) that what we are describing is already possible, with some manual work. You can save a report to file, close an app (or start a new one), then create and save another report and compare the two reports with a file compare tool.
If anyone tries this, please remember to use the same exact key selections and sort order for both reports, otherwise the comparison will be too messed up to work with. (Just don't change any options between the two runs.)
i mean there may still actually be a way to investigate the memory used by windows system and find out directly which programs have registered which global hotkeys, though obviously not easily.
-mouser
I wonder if anyone has access to a program called WinHex. It comes in several editions, quite expensive all. One of the top editions has a feature to make a dump of (all?) system memory. I don't know if that includes kernel memory and other regions of RAM reserved by the OS, or only application-side memory. With some luck though it might be possible to find out where the registered hotkeys are stored. OTOH, I'm not at all sure if I could then replicate such a memory dump in Delphi. It's quite a deep-hacking thing.
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Hello tranglos
It seems that you are Marek Jedlinski, the author of the program KeyNote. I tried to contact with you through your mail but it was impossible.
I only wanted to give you thanks for your KeyNote program and tell you that as I am a very active user of that program, someday I decided to download your source and added some funcionality I missed. I did share that new version (fork) in SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote-newfeat/) and finally in Google Code as "KeyNote NF"
http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/
Although my first intention was only to add a few things, I keep maintaining that new version, at least in the short free time I encounter.
You will be welcome there
Regards
Daniel Prado
PD: Sorry for this intromission in the thread. :D
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Marek, looks like you have started hobby programming again. :)
Keynote is one of my most favorite programs that I have ever used.
I hope you get the motivation to restart on keynote at least, if not the other programs.
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Hello tranglos
It seems that you are Marek Jedlinski, the author of the program KeyNote. I tried to contact with you through your mail but it was impossible.
I only wanted to give you thanks for your KeyNote program and tell you that as I am a very active user of that program, someday I decided to download your source and added some funcionality I missed. I did share that new version (fork) in SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote-newfeat/) and finally in Google Code as "KeyNote NF"
http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/
Although my first intention was only to add a few things, I keep maintaining that new version, at least in the short free time I encounter.
You will be welcome there
Regards
Daniel Prado
PD: Sorry for this intromission in the thread. :D
-dpradov
Hey great job with updates. I just gave it a go it is looking nice however there is one major feature went missing. What happened to drag and drop support? In previous versions I could drag and drop text files from explorer. It does not work now.
I thing Tranglos will get back to Keynote eventually, it will haunt him :)
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Keynote-nf thread @ https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=17493.0
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I only wanted to give you thanks for your KeyNote program and tell you that as I am a very active user of that program, someday I decided to download your source and added some funcionality I missed. I did share that new version (fork) in SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote-newfeat/) and finally in Google Code as "KeyNote NF"
http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/
-dpradov
Hi Daniel, thanks a lot for posting! I've seen the KeyNote NF thread at DC, but I don't think I ever got your email. It's great to hear that you are continuing KeyNote. I'll add a link on my site to your project right away.
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I thing Tranglos will get back to Keynote eventually, it will haunt him :)
-kartal
It does haunt me, but honestly, not in a good way. Long ago my wife and me decided we we never going to live on credit, so thankfully we have no loans to repay in the real world, but the feeling I have about KeyNote is like a huge unpaid debt. Or unfulfilled promises, which is really the same in a way. I guess that's why I registereed a new domain to publish any new stuff I do - but trying to forget an unapid debt is rather futile!
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Hi Marek,
Well, I sent several emails around november of 2007 to the public directions I found about you and KeyNote: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]
But now I suppose that my emails would be lost among hundreds of emails you should have been receiving about KeyNote. And logically, because of the fealing you have about KeyNote, you simply ignored that emails.
It seemed a pity to me not to share my adaptation to Delphi 2006 as well as the changes I had made, particularly the possibility to play with hidden nodes. It taked much acceptance because there are still many (and very loyal) users of your original program, eager to see this program push ahead.
After doing some other small fixes and improvements I found very interesting and instructive to try working on a version control system. In my company is still used SourceSafe and want to make the leap to a more modern system. When I knew about Subversion (and TortoiseSVN as a client) I liked it so much and thought that could be a good idea to try it in a real case, and in an Open Source environment, which had no experience. KeyNote was an excellent candidate.
And changed its name to "KeyNote NF" because it seemed to me correct to differentiate it from your original version. Besides, looking for "keynote" in the Internet never was easy; now with "keynote nf", yes.
I chose to Google Code because I found it very agile, fast and intuitive. Well, now I'm very happy with the experience.
I do it for pure hobby and because I think making the effort to improve the program (because at first I do it to meet my needs) and not share with the community it is a lost effort and a lack of respect for those who like you have offered programs as free software.
I also admit you that there are times I feel a burden that there is so much demand (and mine is not the merit that the program is so well worth) because I have neither the time nor can always dedicate it to this task, I have other hobbies and liabilities.
Finally, for me it's an extra effort to respond in English. I have to help me many times with the program "Lingues". In Spanish would be much easier.
Anyway, this is more or less the story of KeyNote NF
Regards
Daniel
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Welcome Daniel :up:
One of my very favorite aspects of this forum is seeing conversations like this when we get to meet new programmers with these surprise guest visits! :-* :-* :-*
Here's hoping you stay around for a while and make yourself at home. :Thmbsup:
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Hello mouser, thanks very much for your kind welcome ! :)
It will be a pleasure to be able to participate in this forum from time to time
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It will be a pleasure to be able to participate in this forum from time to time-dpradov
And thanks for making the extra effort to do so in English. No hablo español.
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I thing Tranglos will get back to Keynote eventually, it will haunt him :)
-kartal
It does haunt me, but honestly, not in a good way. Long ago my wife and me decided we we never going to live on credit, so thankfully we have no loans to repay in the real world, but the feeling I have about KeyNote is like a huge unpaid debt. Or unfulfilled promises, which is really the same in a way. I guess that's why I registereed a new domain to publish any new stuff I do - but trying to forget an unapid debt is rather futile!
-tranglos
I agree about debt stuff, and I am debt free as well. :)
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ActiveHotkeys got a top "QuickPick" in PCMag's 2009 Windows Utility Giude!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348850,00.asp
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Great program! However, I noticed that it does not show the Alt-F4 as active (the key that brings up the "turn off computer" dialog box in Windows XP, or closes whatever application window you're in).
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And now showing on Maximum PC's website! Congrats! :Thmbsup:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/web_exclusive/freeware_files_case_keyboard_krazies-525
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noticed that it does not show the Alt-F4 as active (the key that brings up the "turn off computer" dialog box in Windows XP, or closes whatever application window you're in).
-MrChris
That's becuse Alt+F4 is not a system-wide hotkey. It only works within an application - even though it's a standard that practically all programs respect. (A programmer is theoretically free to reassign Alt+F4 to a different feature, though doing so would be silly.)
It makes sense, because a system-wide hotkey can only be assigned by one application at a time. If Alt+F4 were a system hotkey, only one program could be closed by Alt+F4, and all other apps would have to use different keyboard shortcuts for that. The same applies to Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V etc.
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Tranglos,
It looks like a great app. I am running Vista Business SP2. Under Vista the settings are found in C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Ethervane. Under Vista all accounts including Admin. accounts are run as user accounts. Any program needing to write information to disk needs to have it's privileges elevated to administrator. The only privilege I have as an administrator is that I don't need to type in an admin. password each time I need to elevate a programs privileges. There is a checkbox under properties to elevate permenantly. One thing that is puzzling me is that it has reported 59 out of 1984 possible key combo's as being active, but it reports Ctrl+C (Copy) Ctrl+V (Paste) and Ctrl+X (Cut) as inactive although they do work. Same results occur when run with or without elevation. Any Ideas? Just a tip for the readme is if people want to automate the installation and removal of the program, including adding shortcuts install it with Nir Sofer's freeware gem, Zip Installer. It is available from his site, www.nirsoft.net Brian
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One thing that is puzzling me is that it has reported 59 out of 1984 possible key combo's as being active, but it reports Ctrl+C (Copy) Ctrl+V (Paste) and Ctrl+X (Cut) as inactive although they do work. Same results occur when run with or without elevation. Any Ideas?
-briandr67
The answer is in my reply just above your message :)
The keys you mention are not system-wide hotkeys.
A system-wide hotkey can only be assigned by one application at a time. If Ctrl+C were a system hotkey, only one program could use it, in and all other apps you would have to use a different keyboard shortcuts for "Copy". The same applies to Alt+F4, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V etc.
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Thank You!!!
Configurable HotKeys in T-Clock 2010 would never have worked without this delightful little program.
...They'll be along shortly now!
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Is there already support for VK_APPS (the key that brings up the context-sensitive menu)?
(I checked the thread so far, the docs, and the app itself but didn't have much luck figuring this out.)
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Hi Marek!
Quick question: What is the purpose of the toggle feature? I had a conflicting hotkey today (apparently after installing AutoHotKey its default script uses Win+Z which was already assigned to Ultra Recall by default. And AutoHotKey won!), and was searching for a new one to use (for Ultra Recall). I found that sometimes I would click to find active hotkeys and then when I tried to assign one that was supposedly not active it was rejected by the app with an error stating that it was already in use. So I click on the search button again and all the Yes and No's reversed themselves. I read the About tab and saw where it mentioned a "toggle" feature. What is that for and how does that work? It confused the heck out of me!
Thank you.
Jim
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Mentioned on gHacks
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/08/14/how-to-configure-system-wide-website-shortcuts-in-windows/
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ] (http://www.ghacks.net/2010/08/14/how-to-configure-system-wide-website-shortcuts-in-windows/)
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I seem to have some hotkey conflicts on my system, so I've downloaded and installed a couple programs to identify all the hotkeys/keyboard shortcuts currently assigned by WinXP & my software.
So of course, I downloaded ActiveHotkeys, but I was not able to unzip the latest release, downloaded from the first message in this discussion.<https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=18189.0;attach=40705>
My 7-Zip program states that <activehotkeys-1.10> is "invalid or corrupted."
I then downloaded the 1.0 version, and I was able to unzip & run that one.
Btw, another program I just installed is Hotkey Commander 2.0 (15-days or 15 dollars). If you're looking to improve ActiveHotKeys, I suggest looking at Hotkey Commander for ideas....
Steve
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So of course, I downloaded ActiveHotkeys, but I was not able to unzip the latest release, downloaded from the first message in this discussion.<https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=18189.0;attach=40705>
My 7-Zip program states that <activehotkeys-1.10> is "invalid or corrupted."
-skas
Hi Steve,
You can grab the latest version from here:
http://ethervane.com/files/activehotkeys.zip
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Nice indeed. I was looking for something like that.
I'll try
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This is a great program, as usual. But seriously, how do i find out which programs are using the particular shortcut? I'm having a problem where two programs have the same global hotkey assigned, and the one that wins is not the one I want. So your program tells me there are two programs, but how do i find out which it is?
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how do i find out which programs are using the particular shortcut?-superboyac
Unfortunately, because of limitations in the Win32 API, you can't.
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how do i find out which programs are using the particular shortcut?-superboyac
Unfortunately, because of limitations in the Win32 API, you can't.
-skwire
Aww, crap. This is going to take me forever to figure out!
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Unfortunately, because of limitations in the Win32 API, you can't.
-skwire
What skwire said. Windows has that information, but there is no API function to retrieve it. Your only bet is to stop individual apps and see which hotkeys disappear together with the apps.
Theoretically, a program might:
a) check registered hotkeys
b) kill a process
c) check hotkeys again
d) the difference in hotkeys will show those that the killed app used.
e) repeat from the top.
But it's such an ugly solution (force-killing processes) that I don't think anyone'd want to implement it :) And of course under Vista and highter there will be processes which the user just cannot kill.
Maybe better: remove/disable as much as you can in the various Autostart sections (e.g. using Autoruns (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902)), the check the hotkeys, start the suspect apps manually and check again.
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Maybe better: remove/disable as much as you can in the various Autostart sections (e.g. using Autoruns (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902)), the check the hotkeys, start the suspect apps manually and check again.
-tranglos
I'll give that a shot. If anyone has any tips, the hotkey I'm looking for is Ctrl-Alt-[right arrow]. My Windows installation is still pretty new, so there isn't much software installed. if any of you thinks they might know which program is doing it, I'd appreciate it.
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Could it be some default hotkey from your graphics card driver software?
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Could it be some default hotkey from your graphics card driver software?
-skwire
Ah! Brilliant! I think you may be right. I think it started after I installed my ATI drivers. if you are correct, that's going to be awesome! Great intuition...
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Featured on the excellent FreeDownloadADay site today:
http://www.freedownloadaday.com/2011/08/20/identify-global-keyboard-shortcuts/
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Featured on the excellent FreeDownloadADay site today:
http://www.freedownloadaday.com/2011/08/20/identify-global-keyboard-shortcuts/
-mouser
I noticed that just now. Congratulations tranglos !!
(http://smileys.smilchat.net/emoticon/example/4.gif)
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And featured today on another great site, ILoveFreeSoftware:
http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/22/windows/find-hotkeys-being-used-by-windows-programs-activehotkeys.html
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Here is what happpens on my 64 bit machine:
I run activehotkeys, z,s, other keys stops working.
There are other things that happen, if this is useful to you, send me a response.
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Here is what happpens on my 64 bit machine:
I run activehotkeys, z,s, other keys stops working.
There are other things that happen, if this is useful to you, send me a response.
-raymm
I guess it's not meant to be left running in the background, but if I use it to check Shift and Alphabetical keys:
the combination of Shift + any alphabetical key has no effect when typing.
(this is my pester Tranglos day :-[ )
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I guess it's not meant to be left running in the background, but if I use it to check Shift and Alphabetical keys:
the combination of Shift + any alphabetical key has no effect when typing.-tomos
It should cause no problems running in the background, because it only does anything during the short moment after you press the Test button. Other than that, it just sits there doing nothing. But I've never tried it on 64-bit windows. Are you running 64-bit?
Windows does not have a method that would list registered hotkeys. The only way to check if a hotkey is in use is to attempt to register it. If the attempt fails, the hotkey is in use. This is what ActiveHotkeys does. When it registers a hotkey successfully (i.e, the hotkey was available), it immediately de-registers it.
If for whatever reason the de-registration failed, there would be trouble, because the hotkey would remain registered and hence unusable in other applications, until you quit ActiveHotkeys. I know of no reason why registration should succeed but de-registration should fail. I've never seen it fail, and MSDN does not list any 64-bit specific issues (or any potential gotchas at all). In any case, quitting ActiveHotkeys should restore all keys to normal behavior.
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In any case, quitting ActiveHotkeys should restore all keys to normal behavior.
-tranglos
Yeah, it's no problem when closed down.
I wouldnt lose any sleep over it, just reporting.
also yeah, 64bit (Win7 pro)
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If for whatever reason the de-registration failed, there would be trouble, because the hotkey would remain registered and hence unusable in other applications, until you quit ActiveHotkeys. I know of no reason why registration should succeed but de-registration should fail. I've never seen it fail, and MSDN does not list any 64-bit specific issues (or any potential gotchas at all). In any case, quitting ActiveHotkeys should restore all keys to normal behavior.-tranglos
I used it extensively when coding the HotKeys option into T-Clock and never noticed any ill or even odd behavior. And that was all done on a Windows 7 x64 machine that runs 24/7 for months at a time ... And ActiveHotKeys was running along just fine the whole time.
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New (February 2012): ActiveHotkeys is now hosted on my site at tranglos.com (http://www.tranglos.com/activehotkeys/). This thread is still good for support and new version info, I'm not going anywhere :-)
No changes in functionality, but a standard installer and a portable version are now available. Latest version direct download:
- standard installer (http://www.tranglos.com/dl/activehotkeyssetup.exe)
- portable version (http://www.tranglos.com/dl/activehotkeysportable.zip) (zip file)
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Any comments on the following?
Is there already support for VK_APPS (the key that brings up the context-sensitive menu)?
(I checked the thread so far, the docs, and the app itself but didn't have much luck figuring this out.)
-ewemoa
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Any comments on the following?
Is there already support for VK_APPS (the key that brings up the context-sensitive menu)?
(I checked the thread so far, the docs, and the app itself but didn't have much luck figuring this out.)
-ewemoa
-ewemoa
Let me get back to you on that. I am not sure VK_APPS can participate in hotkeys. Do you know of an app that uses it in a hotkey?
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Thanks for the response.
Do you know of an app that uses it in a hotkey?
-tranglos
Back when I made the original query I was in the process of writing one that did (this was in AHK) -- but I didn't end up releasing it. Apart from that one I don't recall any at the moment.
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Thanks for the response.
Do you know of an app that uses it in a hotkey?
-tranglos
Back when I made the original query I was in the process of writing one that did (this was in AHK) -- but I didn't end up releasing it. Apart from that one I don't recall any at the moment.-ewemoa
Tried it, and sure enough, VK_APPS can be used in hotkeys. I'll add a test for it. Thanks!
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Tried it, and sure enough, VK_APPS can be used in hotkeys. I'll add a test for it.
-tranglos
Thanks!
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New release 2012-02-15
ActiveHotkeys version 1.3.1 build 16
ADDED: support for the VK_APPS key (context menu key). Thanks, ewemoa!
Download the latest version here (http://www.tranglos.com/activehotkeys/)
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Cool, I love this app ... Its saved my ass more than once.
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Thanks for the new release!
Just tested it with VK_APPS and it seemed to work fine :up:
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Thanks for the new release!
Just tested it with VK_APPS and it seemed to work fine :up:
-ewemoa
When I looked at the code, it was already handled. (It does need some special handling, because Delphi does not have a name built-in for this key, so it could not be displayed without additional hand-holding. It's a bug in XE and XE2, listed on QualityCentral).
What was missing was that I forgot to add the key to one of the groups, as AH always checks all keys in a group (alpha, numeric, etc.). So it could display it, but wasn't checking for it. I'm sorry it took so long!
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Great app, thanks alot tranglos! I couldn't withheld my appreciation and donated as much as i can :)
I was looking a long time for such an app to get an overview on existing hotkeys and to use this information to assign new hotkeys.
First i found "Hotkey Commander" but it crashes already at start (Win 7 64x).
Then i tested "Hotkey Explorer" which starts but freezes and doesn't respond few seconds after its start. But it seems to be able for this app to to figure out which hotkey is occupied by which application. May be you(tranglos) can do it, as well.
Additional info: The "standard installer" version (of ActiveHotkeys) doesn't work on my system. I get the error "This program can only be installed on versions of Windows designed for the following processor architectures: x86".
But the portable starts and works well as far.
Thanks alot again!
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Thank you for the program - very nice! But I'm not getting hotkeys that programs/applications use, say Microsoft Word. I ran the program and found that control + right arrow is empty, so I assigned that to a global shortcut.
Some time later I opened Microsoft Word, which uses this shortcut, and my global shortcut was ignored.
Not the end of the world. I just want to make sure I'm using your product right. I know that the tool won't identify which program uses the hotkey, but from what I understand, it should show that the hotkey is in use, correct?
Thanks!
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The website says it works for 32-bit only, the conversations here seem to be about any Windows OS.
Is the program good for Windows 7 64-bit?
If not, is there a recommended alternative.?
"This application does not work correctly on 64-bit versions of Windows. Use it on 32-bit versions only."
http://www.tranglos.com/activehotkeys/
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:o Tranglos, can you tell me what is the issue with Windows such that one cannot tell which program has registered particular hotkeys or shortcuts or duplicates?
I was discussing this issue over at 7Forums: Hotkey Conflict (http://www.sevenforums.com/software/368865-identifying-hotkey-shortcut-mappings-conflicts.html#post3059150)
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Hi, charlestek, and welcome to the DonationCoder site.
:o Tranglos, can you tell me what is the issue with Windows such that one cannot tell which program has registered particular hotkeys or shortcuts or duplicates?-charlestek
The problem is such that the Windows API offers no function to determine which application has registered which hotkey. In other words, there is simply no way to get the information from the operating system.
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Skwire,
Thank you. That is pretty crummy. I'm sure there is no great motivation for Microsoft to fix this.
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I just sent an email regarding the same to Charles Petzold. It would be interesting if he responds.
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Very frustrating, I know!
I've researched this and have never been able to find a solution. I have installed numerous programs which claimed to be able to map out the current key mappings - none worked and several crashed my machine hard.
Jim
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Never hear from Charles Petzold. (who works for Xamarin)
Used to be there would be clear teams from Microsoft that you could identify who was responsible for developing and maintaining what
and you usually could contact someone who could give you some solid information. After the layoffs and Microsoft's contraction,
it is a lot hard to do this.
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@charlestek: Regarding this issue, I'm of the opinion that if an app could have been written to do this, it would have been a long time ago. Hell, I would have written it myself if there was a way to get that hotkey data.
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Unfortunately I can't test under x64; no-one I know round here uses a 64-bit system. Can you describe what happens?
-tranglos
Every time I run the 'test hotkeys' option I get different results alternating everytime I press the button.
{windows 8.1, x64, options: shift+ctrl, numerical 0-9}
So first time I get a list of 3 hot keys, next time I get 8. next 3, next 8 repeating.
Dayna.
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@charlestek: Regarding this issue, I'm of the opinion that if an app could have been written to do this, it would have been a long time ago. Hell, I would have written it myself if there was a way to get that hotkey data.
-skwire
The answer is "Hotkey Commander" (this is not a freeware).
PS you can extract hotkey data using global window subclassing
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Maybe I am blind, but as far as I can see the program does NOT list key combinations with "print/PrtSc" e.g. ALT+PrtSc
Am I right?
Is there a workaround?
Is there a (newer) program which offers this information?
Peter
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sorry -- never mind...
[got mixed up with Ethervane Echo thread]