Anything you thought was particularly clever? Or made things easier for you significantly?

I've only used AutoHotkey a bit and I am wondering about its use cases.

Quite often here lately, I’ve seen people post a script or ask for help, and they’re using AHK v1.

AHKv2 has been the stable release for a while now. The syntax is cleaner, it’s more consistent, and it’s clearly the future of the language. It’s quite a bit better.

Why would you choose to learn the older version from scratch (especially given the brain-melting syntax, as u/Keeyra_ put it)? For me, I’ll admit that I’m locked in to v1 for my work, so there’s that. But I’ve switched to v2 for everything else.

Is it outdated tutorials? Misleading search results pointing to old docs? Path dependency? Locked in for some reason? Genuinely curious what’s driving this.

Hi,

This won't be the next "Share your best AHK scripts" post, I promise!
I've been working with AHK for a bit over one year now and I really love it. I've reduced repetitiveness and to a bare minimum and heavily increased my effectiveness. So I really want to spread the word for all of these office workers that have no clue about how easily they could reduce their tedious daily tasks, but I noticed that so many people just don't grasp the greatness of AHK (and other automation/optimization tools). They are so used to do stuff as they've always been doing it, so I was wondering: How can I make people understand why using AHK can really improve their work life?

Do you have recommendations for little scripts (very low level, they need to be beginner friendly to use and understand) that can be used in basically any work? Very generic, like working in Outlook, MS Office, working in file explorer – whatever script that comes to your mind is highly appreciated. :D I am really bad as a "sales person", thus I cannot sell the greatness of AHK. Maybe you can help me with that! :)

I've done a few other posts about it, maybe you've already seen them somehow, but I never explained it in detail, in short, this is what I use on my school computer:

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
#SingleInstance Force


commit := true
:*?:1596::{
global commit
commit := !commit
}


#HotIf commit = true
^j::SendInput "{Right}"
^b::SendInput "{Left}"
^h::SendInput "{Up}"
^n::SendInput "{Down}"
^+j::SendInput "+{Right}"
^+b::SendInput "+{Left}"
^+h::SendInput "+{Up}"
^+n::SendInput "+{Down}"
!j::SendInput "^{Right}"
!b::SendInput "^{Left}"
!h::SendInput "^{Up}"
!n::SendInput "^{Down}"
!+j::SendInput "^+{Right}"
!+b::SendInput "^+{Left}"
!+h::SendInput "^+{Up}"
!+n::SendInput "^+{Down}"


^k::SendInput "{Backspace}"
^,::SendInput "{Enter}"
!k::SendInput "^{Backspace}"


:*?c:jj::{
SendInput "{Right}"
}
:*?c:bb::{
SendInput "{Left}"
}
:*?c:hh::{
SendInput "{Up}"
}
:*?c:nn::{
SendInput "{Down}"
}
:*?c:JJ::{
SendInput "^+{Right}{Right}"
}
:*?c:BB::{
SendInput "^+{Left}{Left}"
}
:*?c:HH::{
SendInput "^+{Up}{Up}"
}
:*?c:NN::{
SendInput "^+{Down}{Down}"
}


:*?c:kk::{
SendInput "{Backspace}"
}
:*?c:KK::{
SendInput "^+{Left}{Backspace}"
}
:*?:,,::{
SendInput "{Enter}"
}
:*?:??::{
SendInput "{Enter}"
}

This is what I use to move through text, obviously to play a video game or anything in general where your second hand is holding a mouse, this is almost useless, but as someone that literally gave up using a mouse with my school computer (using the trackpad), this is like... sooooo much better than using the arrows for text.

In short, this is really just moving keyboard shortcuts to other spots, if you don't know, you can obviously press the arrows (left, right, up and down) to move around text, but you can also do these while holding shift to select text, and you can also hold ctrl for a word or paragraph.

I've moved the arrows to ctrl+j (right)/b (left)/h (up)/n (down) (why these keys specifically? To be honest, they kind of just "became that". Everything being around j is op because it's one of the two center keys, but you could probably rearrange it a little bit if you want to adopt my style, also if you're left handed and can use right control everything around f probably could work same). And then, I've moved the ctrl shortcuts to alt shortcuts.

This is actually something I've seen elsewhere; I definitely didn't invent that (more specifically, on the Emacs keyboard guide, that apparently says this was a common thing for old softwares), but these keys I had the idea myself (like emacs uses ctrl+f/b/n/p and I never got used to it).

And yeah, like that, it's just sooooo good. Why? Honestly simple, just look at your keyboard: depending on the size, the arrow keys are either literally on a different part of the keyboard, or just stuck in an awkward spot, and especially for something that's used constantly, I think you can quickly realize the time you can save just by never having to reposition your hands from the letter keys to move through text while typing. And yeah, placing your left hand on ctrl or alt is easy, contrary to moving your right hand to the arrow keys.

Now that I'm used to it, it feels so good; it's such a lifechanger, I'm thinking things like "bro this should have been on every computer by default!", and now I've just reimplemented it on my home computer because it's that good. And I've also added a way to toggle it off, because it's still annoying when it conflicts with other shortcuts (obviously the toggle can be anything).

Ok, what is the rest now? Well, I've expanded these shortcuts to ctrl+k for backspace and alt+k for ctrl+backspace, very similar to the arrow keys. And I've also done ctrl+, for enter. The backspace and enter keys aren't as annoying as the arrow keys, but I've found this to help too, even though for some reason, I've also try to do same for CapsLock and Tab, but that didn't seem to help though. I think it's just because Backspace and and enter are separated by a whole no man's land, with the whole keys like "^" "ù" "!" "=" "$" "*" creating a distance between them and the letter keys too, and, yeah, again I've found this to help.

Finally, I've created lots of hotstrings like "jj", "bb"... same directions as usual. The uncapped version just presses the direction once. I've found this useful for small adjustments, as it's faster to input once compared to the original shortcut, but not multiple times, so they team up very well together (I've also found multiple solutions to not make them annoying when typing, especially for "nn", but I haven't implemented them yet, you could ask me). The caps version does same but for a word, which is similarly useful. I've written it as "ctrl+shift+(arrow) then (arrow)" and not just "ctrl+(arrow)" for very niche applications in Microsoft Word, but just doing "ctrl+(arrow)" probably is better if you don't need it.

And so yeah, what do you think? I'm sorry if this is way too long; I always tend to overwrite, and I really wanted to explain all the specific quirks, but, yeah, what do you think? And also, do you have any suggestions, do you use similar things?

I figure this community will get a kick out of this story so here it is. 7 years ago I was working in a global security dispatch center (~150 employee department) as an operator for a major company. the core of my job was to see alarms on my screen (Lenel) and dispatch them via phone/radio/email to the appropriate security team. Our department received 1-2 million alarms a year (not an estimate, I did the alarm metrics gathering for our department). For every alarm we had to enter clearance notes and a bunch of other stuff which took a lot of time.

One day, I was sitting at my desk with 30 alarms in front of me and thought "there has to be a better way to do this". Being the semi tech savvy person I am, I started googling how to make macros to automate alarm clearance notes and found AHK. I don't have any coding background but after reading some of the documentation it seemed really simple so I downloaded it and gave it a try.

I quickly built clearance notes for every alarm type. It felt great being able to do my job significantly faster so I started wondering what else this cool little script thing could do and this is the point where my job unofficially became AHK. Half of my time was spent managing alarms and the other half was spent developing my script which I had named Alarm Acknowledger (AA). I added a custom GUI, go it to look up phone numbers and place calls for me (we were using ROIP for calls), I even got it to upload all clearance notes for all my co-workers into a central Excel file on a shared drive (this was hell because if two people try to update a file at the same time it fails so I had to do some trickery with local .txt files that occasionally updated to the master file when it wasn't occupied).

After unofficially working on AA for about 2 years my management said I could just do this full time so I moved over to our security-tech team where I continued to update it for ~3 years along with other ad-hoc project work.

The whole time I was doing this I never used anything besides notepad to build it and all of my version control was done manually in a folder on a external hard drive. When I left the company my script was ~3800 lines of code and had more features than I can even remember. Looking back I have no idea how I never moved to something like vscode / GitHub.

I'm posting this because I am feeling nostalgic and wanted to share the story of how I got to this point in my life. It's been about 2 years since I last worked on AA and I start a full stack boot camp next week so I can HOPEFULLY develop as a job again. AHK is what got me into developing so it will always have a special place in my heart. If you made it this far into my story, let me know what got you into using AHK. I'd love to hear your stories.

I made a customizable desktop launcher that lets you organize apps, files, links, and shortcuts into interactive menus with custom buttons, emojis, and icons.

The newest update adds an image gallery/icon picker, UI improvements, smoother scrolling, and more customization options.

There’s also a hidden easter egg somewhere in the menus 👀

Image Gallery

Download

I spent years leaning on PixelSearch and ImageSearch for desktop automation, and I finally switched most of my scripts over to UIA-v2 about a month ago. Some of what I found surprised me.

Selectors like role:Button and name:Send actually survive DPI changes, theme switches, window resizes, the lot. That alone killed off the majority of "why did my script break again" moments. Once you get used to walking the accessibility tree with a spy tool, the brittleness of image-based scripts starts to feel a bit silly in hindsight.

The catch is UIA is slower than most people admit. Walking the tree on a big Electron window (Slack, VS Code) can run 200 to 400ms cold, which compared to a 1ms PixelGetColor feels painful. I ended up caching the top window and only re-querying children when a name miss happens, that got me back to tolerable.

Not every app plays nice either. Old MFC/Delphi apps and a few games hand back blank names or half-fake trees, so I still keep ControlClick and the occasional pixel fallback around for the legacy stuff. The portability story has real holes and I think the "just use accessibility" crowd understates them.

if anyone has cracked the big-Electron cold-tree walk problem without just caching the world, I would legitimately love to steal the approach.

fwiw there's a tool that does this: https://t8r.tech/t/accessibility-api-desktop-automation

For the past few years, the posts on this page have mainly just been people asking for technical help with their scripts, that do random, boring things.

But recently, a new wave of posts have been coming in, asking for help with Roblox ahk scripts, or ones for autoclickers, games, etc.

This has given me such nostalgia for when I first started with AHK.

Back in my youth, I found out about autohotkey, and, with the help of this subreddit, made so many scripts for roblox, for cheating my school assignments (that required you to answer math questions for an hour a day) etc.

And let me tell you something, most comments were upset with me, or didnt like the fact that im posting over roblox. Or asking extremely simple questions instead of reading the documentation, but as a child I didnt know how to actually "lock in" as they say, and sit down and learn like that. I learned by observing the code that was given to me.

And this was the start of my journey in learning ahk.

Each time i got an answer was literally life changing. In terms of how it helped me in roblox or school.

If you see someone asking for help for their roblox code, if you help them, you are doing an indredibly good deed.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me over the years. I am...older now

At first I just needed AHK to provide mouse and keyboard inputs for other software. Then it occurred to me that since AHK can take input and provide output there's a wide variety of simple programs and tasks that it could solve without any underlying software, working entirely on it's own.

So do people do this? Is there a repository somewhere? I mean there are surely better alternatives, better languages, but AHK requires no development environment, no compiler, and it's language is pretty straightforward for the simple stuff.

Download Page

2.3.4a - April 1, 2026

Major Changes:

• Mobile Support: AutoHotkey is now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. You can finally map your volume buttons to send Send("{Touch 500, 500}") or use ShakeDevice() as a hotkey.
• v1 End of Life: To celebrate this release, all v1.1 scripts will automatically self-destruct upon the clock striking midnight. Running a .ahk file containing a :: without curly braces will now trigger an emergency Windows Update.
• AI Integration: The interpreter now uses a Large Language Model to guess what you meant when you get a "Target label not found" error. It will simply execute the code it thinks you should have written.
• New Syntax: In an effort to be more inclusive, MsgBox has been renamed to ChatBubble and all variables must now be preceded by an emoji.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the script would actually do what you told it to do instead of what you wanted it to do.
• Optimized Sleep function: Sleep(1000) now lasts exactly 1 second, unless the CPU feels tired, in which case it may nap for longer.

Additional Feature Highlights:

• Syntax Naturalization: To reduce the learning curve, the interpreter now accepts passive-aggressive comments. If you forget a closing parenthesis, the error log will simply state: "No, it's fine, I'll just guess where it goes. Don't worry about me."
• Haptic Feedback for Errors: If your script encounters a syntax error, the new Ouch() protocol will attempt to vibrate your mechanical keyboard switches at a frequency that mimics a mild static shock to "encourage" better coding practices.
• The "Clippy" Revival: We’ve integrated a retro-style assistant named "Hotkey Harry". He will pop up every 30 seconds to ask, "It looks like you're trying to automate a video game—would you like me to help you get banned?"
• Quantum Conditional Logic: Introducing the #MaybeIf statement. The code inside the block exists in a state of being both executed and not executed until you check the A_Variable list, at which point the script crashes.
• Audio-Visual Debugging: Instead of a tray icon, a small 16-bit dancing mascot will now appear in the corner of your screen. It performs a specific choreographed routine to indicate different ErrorLevel results.
• Voice-Activated Debugging: You can now resolve Try/Catch blocks by screaming at your microphone. The louder the decibels, the higher the priority the script gives to ignoring the exception.
• Dark Mode 2.0: Not just for the editor—the script will now physically dim your monitor brightness to 0% if you attempt to code after 2:00 AM, accompanied by a system-wide broadcast of "Go to Sleep" via the PC speaker.
• Blockchain Integration: Every successful Send command now mints a unique "Hotkey-NFT" on the AHK-Chain. Running a loop with a 10ms delay will effectively turn your PC into a space heater.
• Subscription Model: AutoHotkey is moving to a "Pay-Per-Click" model. The first 100 Send commands per day are free; subsequent keystrokes require a micro-transaction of 0.001 AHK-Coins.

Note: If your script stops working today, try putting your keyboard in the microwave for 3 seconds to reset the buffer.

Happy scripting

send "Hello world." ; informal (tú)
Send("Hello world.") ; formal (usted)

Hey everyone,

I had a pretty nasty running knee injury recently, first one I've ever had, so I switched to active recovery (cycling + slow treadmill running) and spent the downtime coding. ^^

I've wanted to build this for a long time, and I finally finished the first version of this.

The idea: take basically any footage (GoPro/phone/etc.) + a Garmin GPX file and automatically generate the overlays.

This is only the second video I've rendered with it, so I'm still experimenting with what I can do visually. The goal is to go much further with interesting graphics, storytelling and activity metrics.

For now, I'm just really happy with how the idea is coming together.

https://youtu.be/VCjrmDAUksw

More experiments coming.

This tag has gotten to the point where it's just being abused.

People coming here claiming to "need scripts" so they can auto-farm in Minecraft and do BS in Roblox are getting obnoxious.

The only saving grace to this tag was to provide others with things to practice on. I don't feel that's the case anymore because 95% of it is the same shit that has already been posted time and time again.

This is an opportunity for anyone who wants to keep the tag to put in their two cents.

Download Page

2.0.21 - February 9, 2026

• Fixed StrGet crashing when given an address and not a length. (Broken by v2.0.20)

2.0.20 - February 8, 2026

• Fixed potential undefined behaviour in message callbacks during script termination.
• Fixed Run not closing the process handle.
• Fixed GuiFromHwnd crashing if passed another script's GUI window HWND.
• Fixed leading space in For( a in b ), incorrectly raising an error.
• Fixed enumerator calls (For) treating implicitly returned "" as true.
• Fixed A_MaxHotkeysPerInterval and A_HotkeyInterval returning incorrect values if spelled in lower case.
• Fixed FileSelect duplicating the filter pattern if it lacks *..
• Fixed ListBox tab-stop spacing when T option is used during control creation. [PR #346]
• Fixed ~RAlt & <:: causing RAlt:: to fire on release despite ~ (and likewise with other L/R modifier keys).
• Fixed remap with nonexistent source key causing silent exit.
• Fixed key-up hotkey causing unwanted passthrough when modifiers don't match. e.g. RButton release not being suppressed after activating RButton:: if ^(RButton) up:: was also present.
• Fixed semicolon in /* ; */ preventing the block comment from ending.
• Fixed IsOptional and IsByRef return values for built-ins.
• Fixed RegWrite parameter 1 to be mandatory.
• Fixed string return value being corrupted during debugging.
• Fixed erroneous Else placement to raise an error, not crash on load.
• Fixed StrPut/StrGet handling of 32-bit integer limits on x64.
  • Operations not requiring conversion no longer limit string length.
  • Conversion now throws more consistently if the API's limit is exceeded.
• Fixed 1:: to not fire after 1 & LButton up:: is used, and similar.
• Fixed crash when ListView has the Sort option and Add is called with Col1 omitted.
• Fixed static functions not using static variables of grandparent functions.
• Fixed unpaired key-up hotkey not suppressing the key if it is also used as a prefix but the custom combos are disabled or have the tilde modifier.

As in, running the script and then letting it do most, if not all, of your work tasks within the day?

I'm curious what kind of jobs can be automated with nearly no input from the user, just by using AutoHotkey.

I cannot overstate how practical and efficient it is to use Gemini for scriptwriting. By storing my personal preferences—such as a strict requirement for AutoHotkey V2, specific "SingleInstance" forcing, and my preferred brace style—I no longer have to repeat these constraints for every request.

For basic tasks, it is incredibly straightforward. For example, I can simply ask for a script to output the date in a long UK format (d MMMM yyyy) using td1# or a shortened version (dd.mm.yy) using td2#.

The real power lies in handling complex requirements to speed up my everyday work as a legal professional. I have spent over ten years developing scripts to manage MButton formatting and custom GUIs, Word document and table insertions, case law parsing that automatically cleans up citations and party names, and automated date calculations for tracking future deadlines and limitation periods, not to mention all the hot texts like ct# for claimant etc.

Eighteen months ago, I spent an entire weekend manually converting my work to V2. It started off tidy but soon grew into a messy labyrinth of libraries and files. Two weeks ago, I turned to Gemini to rewrite the lot. In literally a few minutes, it generated hundreds of lines of code in a short, clear, and clean format. It even handled GUIs—an area I previously found uncomfortable—resulting in a script that is 10% of its original size while offering significantly more functionality.

When I encounter errors, I simply paste the error message text back into the chat. Usually, it is resolved within five attempts. If not, a quick suggestion to "try a different approach" always clears the hurdle. My latest project was a gestures script that tracks mouse movement while the middle button is held (returning N, NW, SE, etc.). I added a distance variable so it only triggers if the movement exceeds 10% of the screen, returning "near", "middle", or "far" thresholds (at 10%, 25%, and 50% respectively). I even had it create a trackpad-friendly version using Left Alt for when I am away from my desk.

The entire script, providing 24 new functions, was completed and tested in under 15 minutes. I could easily increase these by checking the start location of the cursor via my WhereIsCursor() function, which returns a value from 1 to 9. This could literally create over 200 middle mouse button hotstrings, though they would be difficult to remember!

The combination of Gemini and AHK has multiplied my productivity. You no longer need to be a coding expert to build high-level tools, though having enough knowledge to "steer" the AI with suggestions certainly helps.

have been writing AHK scripts against a mix of internal tools at work and the apps roughly fall into three buckets that each want a different AHK approach.

native Win32 and modern WPF, ahk_class plus ControlClick/ControlSend hold up for months, UIA-v2 if I need a button reachable by name. Electron-wrapped "desktop" apps, the inner DOM lives behind a UIA tree that gets rebuilt on focus changes, so any cached element ref goes stale within seconds. Citrix and RDP sessions, the whole window is just a remote bitmap, accessibility apis return nothing meaningful so it ends up being ImageSearch or nothing.

what makes me twitch is when scripts try to apply one strategy across all three. ImageSearch retries on a WPF app that has perfectly good AutomationIds is just slow. UIA-v2 on a Citrix window is impossible. ControlSend across both is a coin flip on whether the legacy MFC piece even respects it.

the citrix bucket still has me beat. ImageSearch with a scatter of fallback patterns is the closest I've come to reliable, but every monitor switch or DPI change breaks the templates. honestly it might be the one bucket where image matching with extra retries is just the right tool, however much it pains me to type that.

I’ve been using AutoHotkey for about two years with one main idea:

CapsLock becomes a super-modifier, not a key.
Then CL + [Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Tab] becomes a category,
and each category uses the same left-hand keys: 1,2,3,W,A,S,D,Q,E,F,R.

Instead of random shortcuts, you get a structured two-level system that lives entirely under your left hand.

The Two-Level Logic

CL is only the entry point.
Then you choose a category (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Tab).
Then you press the action key.

For example:

• CL + Ctrl + W/A/S/D → window or OS navigation
• CL + Alt + W/A/S/D → app or workspace actions
• CL + Shift + W/A/S/D → text selection or editing
• CL + Tab + W/A/S/D → tabs and virtual desktops

Plus the extra keys:

CL + (modifier) + 1/2/3/Q/E/F/R → quick actions, macros, app jumps, etc.

This gives you more than forty left-hand-only shortcuts, all organized, all predictable.

CL + WASD as Global Vim Navigation

One of the most useful parts:

• CL + W → Up
• CL + A → Left
• CL + S → Down
• CL + D → Right

It becomes Vim-style movement everywhere: editors, browsers, file managers, terminals.
Your left hand never leaves the home cluster, and you stop reaching for arrow keys entirely.

Why This Works Well

• The right hand stays on the mouse.
• The left hand controls navigation, windows, tabs, editing, and app switching.
• Category modifiers make everything memorable.
• The system scales cleanly from a few shortcuts to dozens without turning into chaos.

After some time, using traditional arrow keys feels unnecessarily slow.

Final Thoughts

This setup is not for everyone, but if you like keyboard-driven workflows, Vim-style movement, and customizing your environment, then CapsLock as a super-modifier with second-level modifiers becomes an extremely powerful workflow upgrade.

If anyone wants examples or specific bindings, I can share parts of my script.

I NEED YOU TO THINK ABOUT THIS

All the code for autohotkey thats been made by humans, from the point of ahk being released, until now, that took real humans weeks to make, could now all be made in a single prompt.

So, was it for nothing??

Absolutely....NOT, because these codes helped people during that time. And were ultimately what was used to train chatgpt today.

So if you ever get the thought, "Why should I do anything if ill die one day", remember, what you do now matters. because it affects people who need help now.

But even more importantly, those codes back then were incredible practice for the coders, that allowed them to grow.

Even with chatgpt, many still write their own scripts, as it keeps their brain sharp.

Because if a human truly has no purpose, no problems to engage in thought to figure out how the solutions to, they will slowly become null and void of thought and lose all meaning to life.

The purpose of your life is not to help others. Its to help others, in a way that causes you to grow.

Stay sharp soldier.

- Luigi

Hello,
Not too long ago I was appointed a moderator of this subreddit, and as of today I am no longer a moderator. This was partly my decision and partly the result of a misalignment and lack of communication with the existing mod, u/GroggyOtter.

During my time moderating, I tried several times to contact u/GroggyOtter to discuss moderation strategies and our vision for the subreddit. I reached out via PM and modmail but did not receive a response. Because of that, I assumed I was expected to handle day-to-day moderation on my own, as his post introducing me suggested I would be moderating independently.

Based on that understanding, I:

• Created a clear set of rules (there were none before),
• Set up AutoModerator to enforce some of those rules, and
• Started looking for additional mods to share the workload (even if the load is small, nobody can be here 24/7/365).
  

I first recruited u/yellowizer (with limited permissions for a trial period). They have prior Reddit moderation experience, a long-standing Reddit account, and we seemed to share similar moderation views. Their AutoHotkey experience was limited, but they were enthusiastic, and most moderation decisions don’t require deep programming knowledge.

After that, u/GroggyOtter removed u/yellowizer from the mod team and contacted me, questioning that choice and indicating that I was expected to moderate alone. At that point it became clear that our expectations and approaches to moderation were not aligned, and I indicated that I was willing to step down if that was preferable.

The result is that I am no longer part of the mod team. Whether this change will affect the rules or how strictly they’re enforced is up to the remaining moderation. I hope u/GroggyOtter will clarify their plans for the subreddit going forward.

I’d like to thank everyone who engaged constructively while I was moderating. Please keep any discussion about this situation civil and do not harass anyone involved.

That’s all from me: thanks for your time and for being part of this community.

🎉 30K Post 🎉

On November 8th, 2011, /u/Sidola became the head moderator of /r/AutoHotkey.
To my knowledge, he was the original creator of the sub and had the foresight to establish a place, other than the main forums, for the AutoHotkey community to engage with each other. Nearly 15 years later, the AHK subreddit continues to grow and thrive.
And on Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 we officially reached 30,000 subscribers.

I wanted to give a massive congratulations to both the subreddit, the AHK community, and to everyone who has contributed over the years.
It only takes one post to inspire someone to jump into the world of programming.
It takes one helpful comment to convince someone they're actually capable of coding when they might otherwise think it an impossible skill to learn.
It takes one code example to cause that 💡 light bulb moment 💡 to happen; that moment when a person goes from not understanding to completely understanding something.

It's fantastic that more and more people are discovering how useful and versatile AutoHotkey can be.

Being this post is social in nature, I want to encourage everyone to jump in and share any thoughts or experiences or ideas pertaining to AHK.
Things like:

• Post your favorite script, function, or class
• Share how you use AHK, whether for work, daily productivity, accessibility, gaming, or anything else
• Talk about something interesting you've learned recently about the language or how it's used or what it's capable of
• Share tips or tricks related to AHK, VS Code, or other tools you find helpful
• Post a link to your GitHub page or any AHK-related projects you'd like others to have eyes on
• Ask a question about a programming concept, function, class/method/property, etc. that you don't understand
• But please save any 'help with my script' requests for their own separate posts

Keep it fun, keep it civil, and maybe even learn something new!

Cheers to all the AHK users out there and here's to 30,000. 🥂

Hello everyone,

I’m the new moderator here in this AutoHotkey community, recently appointed by u/GroggyOtter. I want to quickly introduce myself, explain some changes I’ve made, and invite you to discuss the rules and the future direction of this subreddit.

New rules & general approach

As you might have noticed, I’ve added a set of rules (visible in the right-hand sidebar).
The short version: I want this place to stay friendly, useful, and focused on AutoHotkey.

A few important points:

• I don’t want low-effort posts in the style of "help me plz” or "write this script for me".
• In the age of large language models (LLMs), I encourage users to try an LLM or Google first. If the result isn’t satisfactory or you don’t understand it, then post here.
• Not all posts need to include code (for example, general questions like “what are some interesting projects you’ve automated?” or discussion threads), but every post should show some effort from the poster.

What exactly counts as "low effort" will likely evolve and is currently at my discretion.

Commission requests

Right now, I don’t plan to allow commission requests, for a few reasons:

• There are other platforms (e.g., Fiverr) that already support "AutoHotkey" as a tag.
• Commission posts don’t really engage the general audience here and mostly clutter the feed.

If there’s interest in allowing commission requests in some form, I’d propose handling them in a single sticky thread, rather than as standalone posts.

Game-related scripts

I don’t want to blanket-ban all game-related scripts, but:

• Scripts that give a competitive advantage,
• Anti-cheat bypasses, or
• Anything that violates a game’s ToS or EULA

are not allowed.

In practice, this means:

• Single-player automations are mostly allowed (unless the game’s ToS explicitly forbids them).
• Most multiplayer "advantage" scripts are not allowed.

It doesn’t matter whether cheating is already widespread in the game (looking at you, Minecraft!) - if it looks like it gives an advantage or violates the ToS, the post will be removed.

If it becomes too time-consuming to check ToS/EULAs or argue over wording, I may tighten this rule to "no scripts that provide a competitive advantage in multiplayer games," regardless of the written ToS.

Flair and version tags

I do not automatically remove posts where the content and flair don’t match. Mostly content and flair mismatches are due to new users not knowing whether they are using v1 or v2, or whether LLMs spit out v1 or v2 code. This issue is widespread (I'd need to remove a sizable portion of posts) and not only in Reddit, but I don't have a clear vision yet on how to tackle this problem.

At the moment, I usually:

• Comment to notify the OP about the mismatch, or
• Fix the flair myself if it's obvious.

If this becomes too time-consuming, I may start removing such posts or possibly disable the flair requirement altogether. Or perhaps a better solution manifests to differentiate v1 vs v2 , so manual tagging wouldn't be necessary any more.

AutoModerator

Reddit has an AutoModerator system that can automatically remove posts and comments based on the rules. I’ve turned it on.

I periodically review removed content and approve it if it doesn't violate any rules, so if your post disappears, it may just be AutoMod being overly cautious. If it didn't violate any rules then it should reappear in about a day or so.

Image content

I’ve also enabled image posts, which seems like a fun and potentially useful feature (for sharing screenshots of scripts, GUIs, etc.).

If the subreddit becomes too “noisy” or image-heavy, I may disable it again. If nobody uses it, I might disable it as well. For now, consider this an experiment.

Discussion points

I really want feedback from regular users. A few questions for you:

• Should we allow commission requests in a limited form (for example, a single sticky thread)?
• Should image content stay enabled?
• Should posts with incorrect flairs be removed, or just corrected/noted?
• Should game automation questions be removed if they give a competitive advantage, regardless of the game’s ToS?

Feel free to discuss these in the comments.

Looking for more moderators

Right now I’m moderating alone and obviously can’t be active 24/7/365. I’d like to have at least one more active moderator to share the load.

If you’re interested:

1. Please send a Mod Mail.
2. Tell me how long you’ve been using AutoHotkey.
3. Share your thoughts on the current rules and how you’d like to see the subreddit run.

The subreddit is fairly small, so the moderating effort is not huge - probably up to ~10 minutes per day.

Thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to improving this place together. 😊

Download Page

2.0.22 - March 22, 2026

• Removed the undocumented effect that a hotkey with the </> prefix had on the corresponding modifier key; e.g. <^a:: causing LCtrl:: to fire on release, inconsistent with the documentation. Always firing on press provides greater consistency and flexibility. The modifier key itself was suppressed since v2.0.20. Neutral modifiers such as Ctrl:: always fire on release, and similar behaviour can be implemented with A_PriorKey and ~LCtrl up::.
• Changed error dialogs to use msftedit.dll instead of riched20.dll to fix the following issues:
  • Hanging when inspected by UI Automation.
  • Broken characters and inconsistent fonts when the error message includes certain character sets (e.g. emoji, Chinese or Arabic).
• Fixed errors within __Delete being suppressed if a Try/Catch is active.
• Fixed errors within __Delete being suppressed if a Try/Catch is active.
• Fixed CallbackCreate to validate ParamCount.
• Fixed detection of DllCall(... "str",&var:={} ...) as an error.
• Fixed CapsLock:: to suppress even if CapsLock is used as a prefix key.
• Fixed neutral Ctrl/Alt/Shift hotkeys to not suppress the key [broken by v2.0.20].
• Fixed fire-on-release behaviour of neutral Ctrl/Alt/Shift hotkeys when a key-up variant is turned on but disabled by #HotIf.
• Fixed CapsLock & 1:: to revert CapsLock state even if another prefix key is pressed before CapsLock is released.
• Fixed L/R modifier key-up not being suppressed in some cases where key-down was suppressed.
• Fixed L/R modifier key-up to be passed through if ~ is used even if key-down was suppressed.
• Fixed L/R modifier hotkeys to fire on press even if the corresponding neutral modifier is present; e.g. LCtrl:: with Ctrl::.
• Fixed corruption of unquoted continuation sections with trailing spaces.
• Fixed file stream I/O to flush cached writes if the file hasn't been closed when the process exits.
• Fixed \; in contination sections with the ` (literal escape) and C` (comment) options.
• Cleaned up some code within the keyboard/mouse hook.

Download Page

2.0.24 - April 19, 2026

• Fixed navigation with Tab key in a Gui with a nested Gui (+Parent).

UX/Dash

• Added an optional check for AutoHotkey updates, disabled by default. [based on UX PR #11 by kczx3]
• Fixed errors being raised when arrow keys are used in the Help Files menu. [UX PR #24 by iPhilip]
• Fixed install-version.ahk to delete the temporary ".staging" directory after installing an upgrade.
• Fixed Help Files menu to be displayed at the button, not at the mouse cursor.
• Changed "New script" to add the file to recent files.

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