AHK News 2026-03-26 Why I’m not (currently) worried about AI

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

Here are two graphs that are why I’m not worried about losing business to AI (yet)

I’m proud to say most Hero members fall between the red and yellow squares ❗

AIusage

Here is another interesting graph I researched and created.   Fiverr and UpWork revenue since 2019

FiverUpworkRevenue

I’m sure there are losers as well as winners in that chart but, if you’re embracing AI then I’m willing to bet you’re on the winning side!

How about you❓   Want to be one of the 3.2 million in that red square🟥❓  

If you’re serious about using AI + AutoHotkey like this, the Hero group is where we actually build this stuff together.

Now on with the show…

Learn how to Master VSCode Make the switch to v2 Intro to AutoHotkey Intermediate AutoHotkey Intermediate ObjectsGUIs are Easy w/AutoHotkey Access all our Courses; Quit when you want

ForAnyone

We finally launched AutomateMyTask  in v2

This is a phenomenal executable for writing Fuzzy matching image search v2 code❗

You can check out the fundamentals in this video or click here to learn more about AutomateMyTask .

I also have this AmT playlist which has very short, to-the-point videos!

🚀 AutoHotkey V2 Tool That Writes Code FOR YOU! (Game Changer)
🚀 AutoHotkey V2 Tool That Writes Code FOR YOU! (Game Changer)

If you’re new to working with Functions check out our Intro to AHK Course

Pros / Cons of various ways to use Claude Code

I’ve been using the Claude Desktop app to work with Claude but then switch to using VS Code.  Surprisingly there were big differences!  And then you have the Chrome Extension not to mention Cowork so I asked Notebook LM to help explain the Pros & Cons of each approach. 

AutomateMyTask  lets you visually capture elements and instantly generate working AutoHotkey v2 code—no guessing, no trial-and-error.

The video turned out great!

🚀 Claude Code: CLI vs VS Code Extension – Which One is right for you❓
🚀 Claude Code: CLI vs VS Code Extension - Which One is right for you❓

How much should you pay for AI

Obviously it is tough for me to say how much you should pay for AI however I can tell you this.  I was being overly stingy❗

In this video I explain how I finally realized that I was being an idiot and switched to the Max $100 a month plan.   My guess is you should upgrade too!

💸 From $20 to $200: My Claude AI Upgrade Journey | AHK Hero Extract
💸 From $20 to $200: My Claude AI Upgrade Journey | AHK Hero Extract

Make sure Goldilocks gets the right AI model

While we’re on the topic of paying for AI, in this video I walked through how you can make it easier to decide which model you should be using (depending on the task you’re asking AI to do for you.)

💸 From $20 to $200: My Claude AI Upgrade Journey | AHK Hero Extract
💸 From $20 to $200: My Claude AI Upgrade Journey | AHK Hero Extract

Improving People’s Lives: Story #88

I spent an hour the other day showing a friend of mine how easy it was to use Claude Code through VS code.   Now he’s leveled up and is creating tools that he never dreamed possible!

📚 What we’re reading

🤖 AI News that you Need to Know

⚡️Productivity tips:  

Use Control+Shift+P to open the “Command Palette in VS Code

🤣 A spot of Humor:

This is, quite possibly, the worst movie ever made❗   Don’t’ say I didn’t warn you❗

After Last Season (2009) 

After Last Season (2009) Movie (2009) Watch whole movie to ender 1k giveway

What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #127

In this week’s video I show you a ton of the tools we’ve been building lately

From a headline scoring tool inspired by legendary copywriters, to an icon finder that uses AI embeddings so you can search by concept instead of keywords (search “fly” and it finds airplanes!).

I also walk through some slick UIA Inspector upgrades that auto-generate your automation code and a bunch of other goodies like image converters, notification systems, and FFMPEG updates.

If you’re curious how AI is supercharging what’s possible with AutoHotkey, you’ll want to check this one out.

What we Automated with AutoHotkey #127
What we Automated with AutoHotkey #127

Clients say…

You guys are awesome — Allen Horn

Cartoon superhero mascot in green costume beside the bold text AHK Hero on a yellow background  Hero 🦸

Consider joining the 🦸Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 539 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

  • Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • AHK Script Maker: Check for update, Dash
  • Using Try/Catch in your code
  • AutomateMyTask – released in v2
  • Send/Post Message Syntax writer
  • UIA / Message Syntax writer hybrid
  • Using Peacock with VS Code
  • Setting default values in an ini file

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 3 hours a week where we help people with their AHK issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to AutoHotkey.)

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • There are no secrets to success only things you don’t happen to know right now — Joe Glines
  • Learn how to calculate the future cost of your bad decisions — Joe Glines
  • Don’t sacrifice peace of mind for a piece of luxury — James Cleary

AHK Newsletter⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!

the-Automator  Dedicated to Multiplying your Income

Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff

P.S. I’ve had an insanely productive week using AI to write tools for us! 

If your struggling with AI then you really should consider joining our Hero club!  I guarantee you’ll level you up every meeting❗

 

You’ll Love What’s New in AutoHotkey v2.0.22

AutoHotkey v2.0.22: What Matters Most for Your Scripts

AHK v2.0.22
AutoHotkey v2.0.22 just dropped, and while the changelog reads like a typical patch release, several of these fixes address long-standing pain points that affect everyday scripting. Here’s what you should actually care about.

Check out some of the upgrades in this video

🔧 AutoHotkey 2.0.22 FINALLY Fixes These Annoying Bugs! (You’ll Love This)

🔧 AutoHotkey 2.0.22 FINALLY Fixes These Annoying Bugs! (You'll Love This)

 

The Error Dialog Finally Works Properly

If you’ve ever tried to debug a script that handles emoji, Chinese, Arabic, or other non-Latin text, you’ve probably encountered the old error dialog mangling your output — or worse, hanging entirely when accessibility tools like screen readers or UI Automation inspectors try to read it.

The culprit was riched20.dll, which has now been swapped for msftedit.dll. This is a quiet fix with outsized impact. If you develop on a system with accessibility tools running, or your scripts process internationalized text, error dialogs will no longer freeze your workflow. You’ll actually be able to read your error messages.

Modifier Key Hotkeys Got a Major Overhaul

This is the big one for hotkey-heavy scripters. Multiple interrelated bugs around modifier keys have been fixed:

  • Neutral Ctrl/Alt/Shift hotkeys no longer eat keystrokes. If you’ve ever defined a hotkey like ~Ctrl:: and noticed that other key combinations stopped working correctly, that’s been fixed. The hotkey would suppress the underlying key event even when it shouldn’t have.
  • CapsLock as a prefix key works correctly now. Remapping CapsLock is one of the most common things people do with AutoHotkey. If you use CapsLock as a prefix (e.g., CapsLock & j for navigation), it no longer gets suppressed incorrectly, and its state no longer reverts unexpectedly when you press another prefix key before releasing it.
  • Left/Right modifier key-up with ~ now passes through. If you use ~ (pass-through) on left/right modifier key-up hotkeys, they actually pass through now. Previously they could get swallowed.

If you’ve ever struggled with modifier-based hotkeys behaving inconsistently — keys not firing, modifiers getting stuck, CapsLock toggling when it shouldn’t — update and see if your workarounds are no longer necessary.

Breaking Change: </> Prefix Side Effects Removed

This one could bite you. The < and > prefixes (for targeting left or right modifier keys specifically) had an undocumented side effect: they influenced whether the corresponding modifier key would fire on release. Some scripts may have unknowingly relied on this behavior.

If you use left/right-specific modifier hotkeys and notice changed behavior after updating, this is why. The fix is intentional — it makes the behavior consistent with documentation — but you may need to adjust scripts that depended on the quirk. The release notes point to A_PriorKey and key-up hotkey variants as the proper alternatives.

Silent Error Swallowing in __Delete Fixed

This one is subtle but important for anyone writing object-oriented AHK. If an error occurred inside a __Delete destructor while a Try/Catch block was active elsewhere in the call stack, the error was silently suppressed. You’d never know your cleanup code was failing.

Now those errors surface properly. If you have classes with __Delete methods, this update might reveal bugs that have been hiding in your code — which is a good thing.

Data Loss on Exit: Cached Writes Now Flush

If your script writes to files and then exits quickly, cached writes could be lost. The fix improves flushing on process exit. This is the kind of bug that causes intermittent, hard-to-reproduce data loss — your script usually works, but occasionally the last write doesn’t persist. If you’ve seen that pattern, this may have been the cause.

Should You Update?

Yes. The modifier key fixes alone make this worth it for most users, and the error dialog fix removes a genuine workflow blocker for international users and anyone using accessibility tools. The only caution is the </> prefix behavior change — test your modifier hotkeys after updating.

The full release notes are on GitHub.

FFmpeg 8.1 Feature Highlights and Implications to our Wrappers

FFmpeg 8.1 “Hoare” — Impact Report

Analysis of new features against scripts in S:\ffmpeg
Generated 2026-03-20

📄 Current Script Inventory

ScriptCategoryKey FFmpeg FeaturesHW Accel
Effortless Video Reducer v2Encodinglibx264 libx265 h264_nvenc hevc_nvenc scale subtitlesNVIDIA NVENC
Effortless Video Reducer v1Encodinglibx264 libx265 scaleNone (CPU only)
ClearCutEditingsilencedetect libvorbis libx265 CRF 18, subtitle embeddingNone
QuickRawEditEditinglibx265 segment extractionNone
SceneDetectorEditingscdet filterNone
QuickDesktopRecordCaptureDesktop/display capture, audio mixingNone
TextOverlay v2Transformdrawtext libx265 CRF 18None
Flipper / Rotate v2Transformtranspose hflip vflip libx265None
Animated GIF CreatorTransformfps scale palettegen paletteuseNone
ZoomAutoCropperTransformcrop libx264 CRF 18None
MediaMerger v2Merge/ConcatConcat demuxerNone
Video Sandwicher v2Merge/ConcatConcat with fade transitionsNone
AutoSplitterMerge/ConcatSegment muxer, stream copyNone
MP3 Ripper v2AudioMP3/AAC extraction, bitrate controlNone
AddAudioToVideoAudioamerge volume pan aformatNone
Volume Batch SetAudiovolume filter, batch processingNone
SilenceRemoverAudiosilencedetectNone
Detect Low VolumeAudiovolumedetectNone
ZoomMonoToStereoAudiopan mono→stereoNone
Podcast To VideoAudioImage + audio → MP4None
Image ConverterImageAVIF, BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TIFF, WEBPGDI+
RemoveMetadata v2UtilityMetadata stripping, 40+ formatsNone
Time TrackerUtilityExtraction timingNone

⚡ FFmpeg 8.1 Feature Highlights

Direct3D 12 Encoders (Windows)

New h264_d3d12 and av1_d3d12 hardware encoders. GPU-accelerated encoding on any modern Windows GPU — AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA.

encoding

D3D12 Filters

scale_d3d12, mestimate_d3d12, and deinterlace_d3d12 — GPU-resident scaling, motion estimation, and deinterlacing on Windows.

filters

Vulkan Compute — Faster Init

Vulkan codecs and filters no longer require runtime GLSL compilation, drastically reducing startup time. Makes Vulkan practical for short-running scripts.

vulkan

Vulkan swscale

Software scaling and colorspace conversion can now be offloaded to Vulkan, keeping the entire pipeline GPU-resident.

vulkan

Vulkan ProRes & FFv1

ProRes encoding/decoding and optimized FFv1 via Vulkan compute shaders. ProRes works on any Vulkan GPU, not just Apple hardware.

vulkan

gfxcapture Input Device

New Windows.Graphics.Capture-based screen/window capture. Modern API with better performance, HDR support, and per-window capture.

capture

drawvg Filter

Render SVG-like vector graphics (shapes, paths, styled text) directly onto video frames via Cairo/libcairo. Far richer than drawtext.

filters

JPEG-XS Codec

Low-latency, visually lossless codec via libsvtjpegxs. Useful as a fast intermediate format for editing pipelines.

codec

EXIF Metadata Parsing

Improved EXIF metadata handling natively in FFmpeg, benefiting image and archival workflows.

metadata

xHE-AAC MPS212 Decoding

Experimental native decoder for Extended HE-AAC with MPEG Surround Parametric Stereo.

audio

🎯 Improvement Opportunities

High

Add D3D12 Encoder Paths

Effortless Video Reducer v2

Currently only supports NVIDIA NVENC. Adding h264_d3d12 and av1_d3d12 encoder options would enable GPU-accelerated encoding on any modern Windows GPU (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA). AV1 in particular offers significantly better quality-to-size ratio than H.264/H.265.

High

Switch to gfxcapture

QuickDesktopRecord

Replace the legacy capture method with the new gfxcapture Windows.Graphics.Capture device. Benefits: better frame rates, proper HDR support, ability to capture individual windows instead of the whole desktop, and lower CPU overhead.

High

Add AV1 Encoding Option

Effortless Video Reducer v1 & v2

AV1 is now practical for real-time encoding via D3D12 hardware acceleration. Offers 30–50% better compression than H.265 at equivalent quality. Could be added as a new codec option alongside existing H.264/H.265 choices.

Medium

GPU-Resident Scaling with scale_d3d12

Effortless Video Reducer v2, Flipper, ZoomAutoCropper

Any script that scales video before encoding could benefit from scale_d3d12, keeping the frames on the GPU instead of round-tripping through system memory. Particularly impactful when combined with D3D12 encoding.

Medium

Explore drawvg for Rich Overlays

TextOverlay v2

The new drawvg filter can render full SVG-like vector graphics onto video frames — shapes, styled text, logos, paths. This is a major step up from drawtext if you want more visually rich overlays without pre-rendering images.

Medium

Vulkan Pipeline for Encoding Scripts

All encoding/transform scripts

With faster Vulkan init (no runtime GLSL compilation) and Vulkan swscale, it’s now feasible to run filter chains on the GPU via Vulkan even in short scripts. This could accelerate any script that chains filters before encoding.

Low

JPEG-XS as Intermediate Format

ClearCut, QuickRawEdit

For editing pipelines that produce intermediate files, JPEG-XS offers near-lossless quality with very fast encode/decode. Could reduce intermediate file write times in multi-pass workflows.

Low

Better EXIF Handling

Image Converter, RemoveMetadata v2

FFmpeg’s improved EXIF metadata parsing may allow more thorough metadata inspection and stripping, especially for JPEG and TIFF files with complex EXIF structures.

✅ Breaking Changes — None Affecting Your Scripts

All clear

The only notable removal in FFmpeg 8.1 is the legacy HLS protocol handler. None of your scripts use this — they rely on standard file I/O and local media. No changes are needed to maintain compatibility with FFmpeg 8.1.

Other internal changes (swscale rewrite groundwork) are not yet breaking and won’t affect command-line usage in this release.
FFmpeg 8.1 “Hoare” Impact Report — auto-generated 2026-03-20