Tip: Isolate Your Hotkeys and Hotstrings to the Appropriate Window

As beginners, we tend to create universal Hotkeys and Hotstrings which work everywhere. This usually works out in our early scripts, but, eventually, we discover that our key combinations either interfere with particular programs or we begin to run out of easy-to-remember Hotkeys and Hotstrings. To resolve this issue, limit your Hotkeys and Hotstring to working only for those programs where you need them.

You can create context-sensitive Hotkeys and Hotstring with either the IfWinActive function or command or the #IfWinActive directive. Which you use depends upon what you need to do. The IfWinActive command allows greater flexibility for any set of conditions, while the #IfWinActive directive only works for Hotkeys and Hotstrings.

For more information, see “Chapter Two: Block Windows Shortcuts with AutoHotkey” and “Chapter Three: AutoHotkey #Directives for Context-Sensitive Hotkeys—#IfWinActive” of the book AutoHotkey Hotkey Tips, Tricks, and Techniques, (Chapter Three clears up the confusion between AutoHotkey’s IfWinActive command and the #IfWinActive directive.)

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