Comments on: How do I make my own keyboard shortcuts in Windows?

Question: How do I make my own keyboard shortcuts in Windows?

kuperman — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:19:23 -0800

Windows-E. Windows-R, Windows-M, Windows-L, they're all great. But, how do I start creating my own shortcuts?

I really would love to be able to create shortcuts that open certain IE (or whatever, if it provided this ability) favorites, so if I hit ... Shift-Windows-A, for example, would bring up AskMe... Shift-Windows-J would bring up Jalopnik, or ... you get the idea.

Is this possible? How much *-fu is required to make this a reality? The particular key combinations are not important (I'm not sold on shift-windows-x or whatever), but I just want to be able to open the things I bring up regularly more efficiently (ie without 15 keystrokes or having to take my hands off the keyboard).

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:40:13 -0800

You can set global keyboard shortcuts for things in the start menu. WinKey shortcuts don't work with it on my keyboard but Ctrl+Alt shortcuts do.

My most useful shortcuts are the ones I set up with iTunesKeys to control iTunes without having to look at it.

By: bwilms

bwilms — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:44:34 -0800

Dirt Cheap Macros - following these steps, you'll type Windows+R and then the file name you associated with a shortcut to open your file/program. It's not a three key command, but it's not far off.

As an example, I bring up a sheet called "Inventory.xls" several times a day during work. Instead of double-clicking a Desktop shortcut, or navigating to the file server I...place a shortcut to the file in a designated folder, call it "inv", and now all I have to type is Windows+R, "inv", enter and it's open. The link will fully explain this. This little trick has majorly increased my efficiency on my laptop.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:57:18 -0800

works for programs and files both:

create a shortcut to the program if there's not one already. The location of the shortcut is probably irrelevant

right click, bring up the properties for the shortcut.

click on shortcut tab

enter someting clever for the shortcut key

apply change

By: grouse

grouse — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:13:25 -0800

The location of the shortcut is probably irrelevant.

Actually the shortcut must be in the Start Menu or the Desktop.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:43:39 -0800

dis!

By: yarmond

yarmond — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:54:45 -0800

WinKey will let you launch applications with keystrokes involving the windows key, which are less likely to interfere with program-specific keyboard shortcuts.

By: internal

internal — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:16:00 -0800

Don't forget Win-F (search) and Win-Pause (system properties)!

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:36:47 -0800

If you want to get really fancy, try autohotkey.

By: clgregor

clgregor — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:01:26 -0800

What other Win-* combinations am I missing out on???

By: kuperman

kuperman — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:44:24 -0800

There was a posting of those on lifehacker a while back...

By: bwilms

bwilms — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:13:32 -0800

Windows Key Shortcuts

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:59:53 -0800

HoeKey, is awesome! Lots of functionality and no marketing.

By: id

id — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:36:03 -0800

AppRocket is also pretty cool for this kind of thing. I use it on my notebook. Imagine Windows+R combined with Google Desktop Search.

By: donnagirl

donnagirl — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:04:01 -0800

I'll second AppRocket. Alt-space to activate it, then just start typing what you want - in no time, all your common actions are down to just a couple keystrokes. For example, I get AskMe to open in Firefox just by typing Alt-space-ask.