IDEA: Find the owner program of a hotkey

[ilyag]

I once went crazy with assigning hotkeys to do various things with my computer. As a result, I lost track which program owns which hotkey. Some of these hotkeys seem to do nothing at all. For instance, when I press CTRL-SPACE, nothing happens, even if I do this in a program which should do something after a CTRL-SPACE.

So, is it possible to write a program that tells you which program registered a combination of keys as a hotkey? As a bonus, it could also have the feature to force the hotkey to become unassigned. It would be nice if it worked with hotkeys involving the WINDOWS key, too.

Or does something like this already exist? I couldn't find it...

Thanks,
   Ilya.

[TucknDar]

Oh, that would be sweet! If it's possible it would be great to be able to see every assigned hotkey and thus see any conflicts.

[OGroeger]

Maybe Keyboard Shortcuts or Clavier are able to do this? I didn't test them, it's just an idea.

[lanux128]

this PC Mag utility can detect hot-keys assigned to short-cuts but only for those on the Desktop & Start menu.

• Hotkey Detective 2

[ilyag]

@OGroeger
I don't know, but looking at the websites of these two programs, they don't seem to do it.

@lanux
No, that's not exactly it. What I want is a program that tells me, for instance (I'm not sure that's even right):

  Break key is owned by C:\...\farr.exe
  Shift+PrtScrn key is owned by ...\ScreenshotCaptor.exe
  WINDOWS+R is owned by ...\explorer.exe

... and so on. (This assumes that FARR & Screenshot Captor are running) Ideally, it'd work like the "Find Handle" feature of Process Explorer (that finds out which program opened some particular file or uses some particular DLL).

  Of course, I'm not sure whether it's even possible. Programs like Winamp tell me when they can't assign a new hotkey because it's already taken, but they don't tell me which program took the hotkey.

[lanux128]

yes, this is one tough cookie.. currently the only way to discover any conflicts is via a program that tries to register a hot-key and is unable to do so..

[TucknDar]

yes, this is one tough cookie.. currently the only way to discover any conflicts is via a program that tries to register a hot-key and is unable to do so..

-lanux128 (September 10, 2007, 10:54 PM)

But is it actually possible to discover which app owns which hotkey? Or would the not so good solution be an app that tries to "quasi-register" every hotkey of a certain combination and then tell you all that are taken and which are still available... That would probably be possible through AHK but not as useful as the hotkey-spy

[Armando]

yes, this is one tough cookie.. currently the only way to discover any conflicts is via a program that tries to register a hot-key and is unable to do so..

-lanux128 (September 10, 2007, 10:54 PM)

But is it actually possible to discover which app owns which hotkey? Or would the not so good solution be an app that tries to "quasi-register" every hotkey of a certain combination and then tell you all that are taken and which are still available... That would probably be possible through AHK but not as useful as the hotkey-spy

-TucknDar (September 11, 2007, 01:17 AM)

Actually, that looks like a pretty good solution to me. How does Farr tell you that a hotkey is already taken in its "hotkeys" option panel? it doesn't tell you which app uses it, but it is a step in the right direction )If farr (hence mouser --  ) can do that, why couldn't an app tell you all the taken hotkeys... and even maybe the app using them?

[TucknDar]

Somewhat related, and definitely useful... Discovered this site through lifehacker: KeyXL keyboard shortcut database.

Keyxl.com is the largest online database of keyboard shortcuts in the world.
Our keyboard shortcut database is searchable by software program and covers all the major operating environments including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and browser-based applications.

So if you are looking for keyboard shortcuts try KeyXL!
 
And remember we are constantly adding new programs to our database so if you can't find something now come back and search again at a later time.

You may not find mouser's apps there (yet?), but the database still seems quite huge. Doesn't help much if you've tweaked all the shortcuts yourself though :p

[rjbull]

Nir Sofer's ShortCuts Manager (shman) is a partial solution:

ShortcutsMan displays the details about all shortcuts that you have on your desktop and under your start menu.

It includes hotkey details (e.g. what owns them)  where they are set in Windows, but it obviously can't know what you have set in a hotkey program, or which hotkeys the foreground program uses internally.

[lanux128]

Somewhat related, and definitely useful... Discovered this site through lifehacker: KeyXL keyboard shortcut database.

-TucknDar (September 14, 2007, 07:46 AM)

Tuck, i think you may have meant this link here: Re: Keyboard shortcuts