[IDEA] hotkey/shortcut tracker

[ottenm]

As I age (more rapidly than I expected) I find myself forgetting my favorite hotkeys.  Were they defined in the app?  The OS?  In FARR?  AutoHotKey?  And what were they anyway?  Was it alt-q, ctrl-q, alt-shift-Q?  Where do I live?  And was I supposed to go to the bathroom before the meeting started?

So here's my fantasy: I open up an app that tracks all my hotkey uses across devices.  It's got them split up by the app I use them in, sorted by frequency of use (in that app), a reference to where they're defined, and an editable description field for what I once thought they did.

How 'bout it science?  Any takers?

[skwire]

So here's my fantasy: I open up an app that tracks all my hotkey uses across devices.  It's got them split up by the app I use them in, sorted by frequency of use (in that app), a reference to where they're defined, and an editable description field for what I once thought they did.

-ottenm (May 26, 2021, 11:43 AM)

Unfortunately, Windows does not have a mechanism to get this data.  The only thing your described application can do is test each combination of hotkey and see if it's in use by something.  Also, this applies to global hotkeys only -- not per-app hotkeys (unless they're set as global).  Tranglos, a DonationCoder member, wrote Ethervane ActiveHotkeys to do at least that.   Unfortunately, his site no longer exists, but you can get the app from the Internet Archive here:

http://web.archive.o...ehotkeysportable.zip

[c.gingerich]

Not sure if this will help, but it lists all the active global hotkeys.

https://www.nirsoft....s/hot_keys_list.html

[ottenm]

Bummer about Windows. ;(  They must have closed whatever the keystroke trackers used to use, dumping any/all keyboard activity into a text file.

Thank you for the tip on hot_keys_list!

[BGM]

Nir's Hotkeylist doesn't do win keys, though.

[skwire]

Nir's Hotkeylist doesn't do win keys, though.

-BGM (May 27, 2021, 09:08 PM)

By default, it does not.  You can enable that feature under the Options menu:

[IDEA] hotkey/shortcut tracker

[BGM]

Ah, I had an old version.  The new one, indeed, has the win keys, too.
Thanks, Skwire!

[Nod5]

AutoHotKey?

-ottenm (May 26, 2021, 11:43 AM)

A few tips for AutoHotkey. Pick one organizing system for your hotkeys and stick to it. Some variants:
1. collect all hotkeys in a single .ahk file. You can then simply open the source and look up all hotkeys there. Search for "::" to look up hotkey definitions e.g. "^k::".
2. Separate files, but all hotkeys for one application or window in one .ahk
3. Separate files, but put the hotkey keys in the filename. For example "Firefox copy URL (ctrl+K).ahk". If consistently done then you can search for a hotkey with Everything or similar file search tool.

Also
4. Use a plaintext search tool like ripgrep to instantly search the contents of a whole folder of .ahk source files.
5. Use this script to show a list of all currently running AutoHotkey files.