Hello,
One of AutoHotkey’s main strengths is the simplicity of its code. Most commands are intuitively named, because the AHK files are plain text, you can edit them with any tool that can edit a textfile.
While you can use Notepad to edit your files, that doesn’t mean you should. There are many free amazing editors out there to choose from! Most offer some really big advantages like:
- AutoComplete (auto suggesting as you type)
- Intellisence (tracking the position of your caret and offering up options based on where you are)
- Lexing (color highlighhttps://youtu.be/y-LXw7L1xTcting of key words, terms, commands, directives etc.)
- AHK documentation (easily pull-up AutoHotkey documentation)
- Script Debugging (Output Debug, Callstack, Variable list, etc.)
- File comparison (easily compare multiple files highlighting differences)
- Git Integration (git is critical when working with many people or if you need version control)
- Extensions (ability import pre-programmed macros that help you be more efficient)
- Multi-line typing (Have multiple cursors & type on 1+ lines at a time)
- File comparison (ease of comparing files to each other and highlighting differences)
- Active Development (Is the editor being updated?)
Currently, choosing the “right” editor is not as clear in v2. VSCode is, by far, the “best” having amazing “bells and whistles”. It also happens to be the most complicated to setup and use. ☹
There is a SciTE4AutoHotkey for v2. Sadly it has some difficulties installing and configuring. So much so, we made a tool that can help.
You also might use our AHK Toolkit. Isaias Baez started this project ~13 years ago. He added the ability to edit and run both v1 & v2 scripts which makes it great for testing new snippets.
We also created a separate version of AHK Studio which you can grab here.
If you’re not certain which editor you want to use, you might try our AHKEditSwap tool that makes changing your default AutoHotkey editor a breeze!
We discuss how to decide on an AutoHotkey editor and how to properly configure it in our Intro to AHK course or you can get a 15% discount by clicking here.
How to easily change your default AutoHotkey editor with AHKEditSwap!
Spending a little time to learn your editor is well worth it! We’ve done webinars on all the editors mentioned here. Just go to the relevant links above and search for webinar to get an idea of how to use them.
Additional Resources
Joe, Isaias, Irfan & Team
This campaign was designed to allow you to jump around. At any time you can jump to any one of the emails by clicking below
P.S. We released AHKStudio for v2❗
