19 Facts about AutoHotkey That Will Impress Your Friends

AutoHotkey, AHK for short, is an amazing scripting language that can be used to automate a number of mundane and tedious computer tasks.

Used for Windows Operating Systems, AHK can provide you complete control over a variety of applications that you have installed on your computer.

There are a number of shortcuts that one can create with this remarkable tool to make computing easier and friendlier. But unfortunately, AutoHotkey lacks awareness and many people still remain unaware of this wonderful tool.

Well, since charity begins at home, you can surely tell about AutoHotkey to your family and friends, and impress them with some of the mind blowing facts about AHK.

To educate you on such facts, in this post, we have compiled a list of “19 Facts about AutoHotkey That Will Impress Your Friends”.

1. A Fully Functional Scripting Language: As mentioned earlier, a common assumption people make about AHK is that it’s simply some kind of software that helps to create windows shortcuts, which is simply just not the case. It’s a complete and fully functional scripting language which does a lot more than creating shortcuts; a simple example is web-scraping.

2. Has a Really Easy to Understand Syntax: Programmer and coders would easily understand what we are talking about. For the rest of our readers, let us tell that syntax is like the grammar of a language. It represents the way a language is written and the set of rules that apply to that language. The Syntax of quite a lot of programming languages and even scripting languages is daunting but for AHK, it is really easy and quite intuitive too. 

3. Prime Resource to Create Windows Shortcuts: If you use a Windows Operating System, then you can take the advantage of this prime resource that AHK is. AutoHotkey helps Windows users to design and customize their own shortcuts so that instead of having to go through a number of clicks of the mouse or typing a bunch of stuff, they would simply press a combination of keys to open whatever application program they desire. 

4. Brings Your Favorite Applications Close to Your Fingertips: As mentioned in the last point, since AutoHotkey helps to create shortcuts, it brings all your favorite applications close to your fingertips. You just have to customize a bunch of keys for your favorite applications and then remember the combinations to open them fast and swiftly.

5. Saves Lots of Time: Instead of having to go through a number of steps to open a particular program, AutoHotkey lets you open simply any type of program with the push of a few keys that definitely proves to be quick and time-saving.

6. Remaps the Keyboard: AutoHotkey allows its users to completely remap their keyboards. The usual keyboard follows the QWERTY format but by using AHK, users can change any key to represent any alphabet they please. This fact of AHK further contributes in making computing easier for you.

7. Eliminates the Use and Need of Mouse: Since all of the computing tasks can be performed with a keyboard when customized using AHK, the use and need of mouse are completely eliminated. With the right script, AutoHotkey even allows its users to control the cursor of the mouse with the arrow/direction keys present on the keyboard.

8. Has a Library of Amazing Functions: Functions in programming are basically pieces of pre-defined or user-defined codes that perform a specific task and they can also be called while writing another script. AHK has a complete library of them which helps the learners of all levels including beginners to understand the key concepts of AHK and also make their life easier by simply calling those functions in their own scripts.

9. Monitors a System and Automatically Closes Unwanted Programs: When we use the computer and have a bunch of programs running at the same time, the computing speed gets slower and slower. This is because the computer allocates it given resources to all these programs which put a lot of load on it. But to maintain the performance of your computer, you can use an AHK script to monitor your system and automatically close programs that you have not been using for a particular amount of time. This will ultimately free the resources of the computer restore its performance.

10. Used to Perform Repetitive Tasks in Online Games: Although this fact violates the terms and conditions of many online games, but AutoHotkey can definitely be used to perform the many repetitive tasks online games require its users to perform.

11. Helps to Fill out Freebie or Contest Forms: These days there are a number of Contest and Freebie forms distributed over the internet, to fill them out automatically, you can write an AHK script instead of having to fill your details again and again.

12. Amazing Resource to Test Your Code: If your friend is a programmer then they know that they have to regularly test their code, again and again, to make it running. Well, instead of them having to test their code in difficult programming languages, they can now test their code in AHK which is comparatively a lot easier than many of the languages.

13. Sets Reminders for Backup or System Scans: To keep the computer up and running, system scans are necessary. And to avoid inconveniences in the case of a corrupted Windows, backups are also necessary. To help users in both these important tasks, scripts of AutoHotkey can be used to set reminders.

14. Used With Some Famous Programming Languages: To make things interesting and add to the already present qualities in many famous programming languages such as C# and Visual Basic, AutoHotkey can be used in parallel with them.

15. Used to Prank People: Pranks are quite famous among AHK users and they are a great fun when done even with the people who are not aware of AHK. An example can be an AHK script that replaces the functions of a couple of commonly used keys such as the space bar and caps lock key.

16. Used to Impress the Ladies: If you want to impress your female friends, you can surely automate their computers and help them to get their tasks done more efficiently. The time-saving quality of AutoHotkey will also make them realize the importance of your help.

17. Used to Create Malware: The potential of AutoHotkey enables it to create malware. Ethically, it is not advised to make use of this aspect of AHK, but it is a nice little fact to know about.

18. Has a Decent User-Base: Until January 2012, AHK had around 27,300 registered users. The numbers are greatly increasing due to which the resources available to learn AutoHotkey are also increasing quite rapidly. There are a lot of forums, websites and YouTube channels that are dedicated to learning this great and amazing tool.

19. Never Ceases to Amaze People: Even after stating all these facts, the possibilities of automating your computer tasks with AHK are endless. There still remains a number of tasks that are yet to be achieved with AHK and therefore, we can safely say that it never ceases to amaze people.