AHK’s how to remember all your commands and scripts? AHKCommandPicker

I’ve had a few AHK hotkeys that I’ve used for ages, and don’t have to think about remembering them, but now that I’ve been developing new scripts I’ve started having issues with remembering them. So I’ve been through a few processes.

Pop-up Help MessageBox

This was my first attempt at keepinmg a record, having a help pop-up box assigned to a hotkey (that you also have to remember) that would show what keys you’ve mapped to:

Sort of OK, but you have to keep editing the text in the popup to add new keys

Keep popular ones in one file and have a menu for ones you don’t use that frequently.

This second method hd merits. Yo9u had your standard hotkey file with all the ones you used regularly, and made a pop-up for ones that were useful and you’d only use them intermittently. So you’d use a button or number to activate them from a list, the one below is triggered by the F1 key to pop it up.

This had merits in that if you used one of the items regularly, you could move it across to your main Hotkey file and so you’d only have to learn one new Hotykey at a time.

Also, for the ones that you used less frequently, you could have a Hover Tooltip to explain what a particular script did. So this could sit in the background and be called up when you wanted it.

AHK Command Picker

I then came across AHK Command Picker by Daniel Schroeder and he has some video’s on its usage:

And an explanation on why he built it:

To me, this is a great tool. It was the destination where I was being led to. It allows you to have an AHK HotKey file loaded with the HotKey’s you use all the time, and also a search list of others that you either use intermittently or do not want to be initiated by a hotkey.

I think his naming convention is a bit long, and I’ll explore ways of styling it to my needs , but I think its a fantastic tool for keeping all your scripts in one place and accessible by using the CapsLock key, that is a very nice way to access the menu.

His method of structuring the files is well thought out too. One issue I seem to be having across my pc’s is the #include for pulling in other files. I have to make sure it has the:

#include %A_ScriptDir% 

before calling any other #include as some of my pc’s start looking in windows directory so cannot find the files.

This tool is great in that you do not need lots of separate scripts running in the Task Tray, as this manages most of them. There are a couple I may need to start up separately, AutoCorrect & CursorHighlighter, but my main Keys.ahk can be combined in with the main programme.

Setting up.

The first time I tried to add some of my scripts to the programme I stuffed it up, and I found that after I followed the first video as to the method, its all worked fine since then and I’ve been moving my scripts across quite easily.

You can have personal and office ones and just comment out the ones that you want, where you want via the #include list in the CommandScriptsToInclude.ahk file. A well thought out process.

End comment

This has been a useful progression from the initial idea of trying to remember hotkeys for too many functions to being able to load/ drop scripts and access ones quickly whilst still keeping your favorite hotkeys active. Thank you Daniel Schroeder for sharing such a useful programme. I personally really appreciate it.