from Hacker News

Somehow AutoHotKey is kinda good now

by psxuaw on 5/4/23, 1:03 AM with 94 comments

• by rektide on 5/4/23, 3:42 AM

  Reciprocally, it's just amazing how much better AutoHotKey is at scripting the computer is than everything else is. The language was clearly never the reason why AHK persisted.

  There's works like AutoPy (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopy) and AutoPilot-rs (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopilot-rs), but they offer like 1/100th the capabilities AHK does.

  Personally I think this kind of computer-control is the perfect environment for teaching computing. Rather than writing apps or webapps, I feel like the idea of just writing code to do what you the user would do anyways, but better, is a fantastic introduction to computing & programming. In my ideal world, we'd have an EVE Online server that specifically re-enables the game-client's python interpretter (and periodically does total wipes), so folks can learn to program by scripting not just their desktop, but a complex & interesting game, via it's rich api.

• by thadt on 5/4/23, 4:40 AM

  Back in the day when Facebook games were all the rage, my wife got hooked into Farmville. After getting roped into it to help her somehow (gifts or boosts or something, I don't remember), I was struck by how repetive the actions were. Found AutoHotKey, and soon I had a near fully automated farm. Logging in every couple of days to make sure a popup hadn't messed up the pattern, my farm was soon doing quite well.

  My wife, completely put out that I was 'cheating the game' decided that we didn't need to keep up with Farmville anymore. AutoHotKey saved me a lot of time.

• by fencepost on 5/4/23, 3:20 AM

  I was looking at EMR data export options for a (now closed) client and it seemed pretty likely that at least one was doing exports using AHK, AutoIt or something else similar to simply script producing PDF reports. Possibly with screen scraping, but it might have been possible with nothing but scripted inputs and manual spot checking.

  But the driving question is whether you can combine A̴̢̤̻͍̤͚̫͒͗̏͒̈́̑̈́͒͘͘̕͝͝u̸͎͉̟͋̾͂̏͝͝t̶̲̳̗̪͎́̔͗̅̓́͌ọ̵̌H̶̪͍̯̯͔̣͎̘̹̿̌͆̍̂̽̊̕͘͠o̶̢̨̦̭̣̤̙̞̘̥̣̫͓͇͛̈́͗̉̃͋̿̊͂̑̅̅͗͝ţ̴͔̻̳̱̫͚͍̳̞̯͋̊̃K̷̬̻̩̯̝̩̯̠̹̝͈͉̙̺̫͋̎̐̇̄̓̇̌̅̋̋̚͘e̵̫̓́y̵͔̌ ̵̱̠͈́̅̌̉̍̑͝͝w̴̦̹̮̦͕͗̂̓i̷̟̫̝͔͍̇͊̉̆͘͘ͅt̵̹̭͎͎̗͕̦͍̰͚̀͜h̴̡͕̮̼̺̟̜͇̺̦̣̑̈́̐̑̚ͅ ̷̛̥͙̲̦̗͓͎̳̖͍̣͓̽͊̊̄̏͒̅̓͌̓͝E̴͇̻̗̱̭̣̐̈͑́ͅx̷̡̨̜̳̯͚̳́̒̎͒͑͒͘͜ĉ̴̻͓͎̬̤̤̖̖̭̱͒̋̂̀̎̌̐͠͝e̶̢̛̮͉̰̣͈̣̊͛̕̚l̶̢̛̛̞͍̬̈̂͂́̂̌̿̇͒̋͝͝ to develop 'database' apps that make people's heads explode.

• by geocrasher on 5/4/23, 3:34 AM

     I love Autohotkey so much that it keeps me on Windows. It’s the best GUI automation tool out there. 
  

  Amen. This is exactly it for me. I'm quite lost without AHK. I have yet to switch to V2 however.

• by dumbmrblah on 5/4/23, 3:21 AM

  Initially, I hated auto hotkey and refused to learn another language, as lazy as that sounds.

  On a whim I asked ChatGPT to generate me some scripts and it works perfectly (at least v1 of AHK). I’ve fully integrated AHK into my day-to-day routine and at this point I don’t think I can switch OS’a without something comparable.

  Still have no interest in learning the language, though.

• by csdvrx on 5/4/23, 3:33 AM

  It was always good. I used it to make my own tiling WM for windows, removing decorations and putting windows at fixed coordinates. The syntax is now better, but that doesn't change much.

  For the many people who say they don't like AHK, I don't think a lot have actually tried to use it. It may be "dirty" but it makes it easy to do most of anything you can think about (it can even call dlls)

• by hexane360 on 5/4/23, 2:40 AM

  I loved AutoHotKey V1, in all its janky glory. Say what you will, it was better than batch scripting. I especially loved the primitive GUIs you could make with it.

  Nowadays I don't have as much need for Windows automation, but I'm glad to see the overhaul. I definitely miss a similar program on other OSes.

• by EsportToys on 5/4/23, 4:17 AM

  AutoIt is also great especially for quickly prototyping GUIs.

  I recently built a proof-of-concept for a modernized method of interacting with RTS cameras[0], which unfortunately could not be achieved with frameworks like SDL due to their abstraction obscuring some of the native OS functions needed to create my idea.

  Using AutoIt lets me basically just treat it as a minimal-boilerplate sandbox to make DllCalls. This also means that I could directly listen as well as post raw device messages. For example, I implemented an inertia-based cursor script that basically lets you use your homerow vim keys like it's a trackball[1], which I now use everyday whenever I'm not with my ThinkPad.

  [0] https://github.com/EsportToys/NaturalEdgePan

  [1] https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse

• by 2Gkashmiri on 5/4/23, 4:06 AM

  I love autohotkey.

  It has no schema constraints, you can write all code in a single line if you want.

  IT NEVER HAS INDENTATION issues.

  It never wants you to type in a certain way. Just write and do.

  It never assumes, just does the commands as is.

  Beginners into programming must learn this. Kids must be taught this. It gets a novice excited to use computers and with its simple syntax, it can be taught in a matter of hours.

• by JohnBerea on 5/4/23, 3:37 AM

  Why do I have to learn Yet Another Language to use this? Why can't it just use JavaScript or python for scripting?

• by snitzr on 5/4/23, 4:12 AM

  I took a business class where one assignment was to run a simulation program and try to find the combination of factors that gave the best result. Professor said we could run as many combinations as we liked and he would use the average of each simulation to see who did the best. I had AHK so I ran every simulation combination once and then wrote a script that ran the best outcome over and over to make my initial attempts statistically insignificant. I had the highest average score for that assignment.

• by kragen on 5/4/23, 6:06 AM

  this reminds me of yossi kreinin's 'i can't believe i'm praising tcl' https://yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html

  tcl, like bash, makes some of the same decisions as autohotkey: literal strings are unmarked, while variables to use the value of are marked, and you can invoke commands without parentheses around their arguments

  yosef makes a good case that these are the right choices for a command language only occasionally used for scripting, like tcl, but i wonder if they were also the right choices for ahk, however much they may have screwed up the details

  like, requiring commas between arguments is probably bad? especially between the command name and its arguments? pv-wave idl is the only thing i've ever used that made that mistake

  from the degree of annoyance my wife is having with the & required by scanf in c (she knows more lua than c but the class she's taking is in c), i predict that ahk 2 will not be very popular with ahk 1's audience, who mostly don't know any other programming languages

  i'm interested to know what the best alternatives to ahk are for x11 and wayland, even if they do require being a programmer (i am)

• by Tozen on 5/4/23, 6:25 AM

  Though it's true that AHK v1 was a bit eccentric or wonky, it did a really good job at its primary purposes, among them making it easy for non-programmers and newbies to use it.

  I've talked to and read about so many people that needed to do programming tasks, but couldn't or were intimidated by conventional programming languages, that found AHK v1 a lifesaver for them. Many tend to forget or not factor in small businesses, IT personnel, architects, office workers, etc... People who are not trained programmers or whose companies will not pay for the services of real programmers to make job tasks more efficient. That's where AutoHotkey has found a way in, to the joy of many of its users.

  While AHK v2 is an improvement in many ways, I think it's also important to not lose sight of why lots of people fell in love with AutoHotkey in the first place. Making programming accessible and easy to use, to solve the problems they are dealing with.

• by porridgeraisin on 5/5/23, 7:47 AM

  There is even a dwm-style extremely comprehensive tiling window manager called bug.n [1], which I downloaded it way back in windows 8 days. Made a lot of changes myself and plan to open source it as a fork. Its too good. And combined with the rest of my AHK scripts, my windows setup turns out to be even more customised than many Linux systems I use.

  See my post of my windows setup fooling r/unixporn [2] for how it could look.

  [1] https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/neqnmi/bspwm_not_...

• by bsnnkv on 5/4/23, 1:21 PM

  It was only when I started writing my own sxhkd-inspired hotkey daemon[1] for Windows that I really started to appreciate just how _good_ AHK is. Even just for hotkey binding, AHK does some incredibly clever stuff very transparently to provide for such an excellent end-user experience. For example, using system hooks automatically when the user tries to bind a hotkey combination that is reserved by the system (usually win+something) is implemented so well. Really excellent software and I miss it when I'm using Linux or macOS.

  [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/whkd

• by thot_experiment on 5/4/23, 4:08 AM

  Autohotkey was always good. One of the killer windows apps by a big margin vs competitors. I've had a AHK script I've been adding to for 10 years. One of the first things I put on a new computer.

  #1 most used feature?

  ｒｅｍａｐｐｉｎｇ ｃａｐｓ ｌｏｃｋ ｔｏ ｄｏ ｗｉｄｅ ｔｅｘｔ ｆｏｒ ｅａｓｙ ｍｅｍｅｉｎｇ

• by mikeywazowski on 5/4/23, 2:25 AM

  Other than for the fact that it's open source, is there any reason people prefer AHK to AutoIt?

  I haven't used either for some time now because I don't use Windows much these days, but I tried both and vastly preferred AutoIt. I'm surprised that the author stuck with AHK when he says "AHK v1 was very, very bad.", when surely AutoIt was a viable alternative?

• by mttyng on 5/4/23, 4:18 AM

  Does anyone have any ahk file(s) they would like to share? I have (to me) a basic setup but I’ve never gone very deep on it, but I’d like to. As a new-to-windows user I REALLY miss some of the Linux key commands I’ve set up in i3.

• by Freedom2 on 5/4/23, 3:14 AM

  There's a few automations I want to try out, but does AHK still interfere with anti-cheat in games? I'm concerned if I forgot to turn it off (or if the anti-cheat just simply scans for a AHK executable), I'll be OOL.

• by viraptor on 5/4/23, 4:17 AM

  I've got some apps which outgrew what ahk/autoit can realistically provide for me and moved everything to be based on FlaUI (C# library) instead. I'd really recommend that if people hate the weird custom scripts.

• by DiabloD3 on 5/5/23, 1:29 AM

  For my use, I replaced AHK with kanata. I needed, basically, software QMK, not something to automate and script things.

• by LispSporks22 on 5/4/23, 4:15 AM

  Is there something like it for Linux?

• by theshrike79 on 5/4/23, 6:28 AM

  The first (and only) time I used AutoHotKey was when I was playing the OG Farmville on Facebook (when they still had games).

  I made a script that automatically planted and harvested seeds on a specific shape of a plot.

  After that I really haven't found a use for either AHK or Hammerspoon

• by bartislartfast on 5/4/23, 11:25 AM

  AHK was my go to solution for the longest time, and I had some amazing shortcuts, but I often struggled with writing more complex scripts because of the language not working the way I wanted it to. I might try again now.

• by deafpolygon on 5/4/23, 4:15 AM

  What I really want to know is , what can I use AHK for? Seems like for most "programming"-type things I reach for Python or C#.. these days it's been PowerShell, and I don't know what to use AHK for.

  Would love suggestions.

• by simula67 on 5/4/23, 4:13 AM

  > It’s the best GUI automation tool out there.

  I think PyAutoGui is pretty good.

• by replwoacause on 5/5/23, 1:04 AM

  If I had to do Windows automation I would reach for:

  https://www.libreautomate.com/

• by mastercheif on 5/4/23, 3:59 AM

  Is there anything equivalent to Keyboard Maestro on Windows? https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/

  I tried using AutoHotKey... I was appalled by the experience.