AHK News 2025-04-03 Why Smart People Never Build Their Own Tools

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy,

Let’s get real. Time is your most precious asset .

Far too many people (especially those who are smart, capable, and resourceful) fall into the trap of thinking they should do everything themselves.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, team leader, or a tech-savvy professional, there’s a moment when you have to ask yourself:

What is the return on your time?

Imagine spending 20, 50, even 100 hours building out an automation or tool that kinda works, but lacks reliability, flexibility, or scalability.

That’s time you could have spent doing what you do best — or simply living your life.

Now imagine this: you hire the-Automator.

In a fraction of the time it would take you to cobble something together, you get a powerful, efficient, battle-tested solution built by experts who live and breathe automation.

Not only does it do what you wanted—it goes beyond that.

More features, better performance, cleaner code, and better User Interface.

You get the benefit of hundreds of hours of experience condensed into a tool that makes your life easier right now .

That’s not an expense; that’s high-yield leverage

Think about it—most people get excited over a 10–14% return on their investments.

But what’s the ROI on reclaiming your time, reducing your stress, and getting tools that elevate your performance or business?

It’s massive.
And it’s immediate.

Trying to do it all yourself means constantly juggling roles, context-switching, and usually building inferior tools that cost more in the long run.

Instead, hire AHK Gurus who already have the skills, tools, and systems to bring your ideas to life faster and better than you could on your own.

Leverage us. That’s what smart people do .

The-Automator doesn’t just save you time.
We multiply your impact.

So let go of that “I’ll just do it myself” mentality.
✅ Reclaim your time.
✅ Hire smart.
✅ Build better.
✅ Grow faster.

We’re here to help.  You can check out my calendar here

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

lifeHackingBaby

World’s Best Clipboard Editor

Last Friday Jean Lalonde joined our AHK Hero call and gave us an amazing walkthrough of his latest tool Quick Clipboard Editor. 

If you’re a Power user then you’ll LOVE this tool!   I extracted the tutorial which you can see here.

It will have you rethinking how you work and wondering how you lived without a clipboard editor!

What’s a Clipboard Editor—and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?
What’s a Clipboard Editor—and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?


Advanced Tips When Sending Messages

Last week Isaias gave Irfan and I a quick lesson to “watch out for” when we’re sending messages.  You can see the video here.

Or go watch our playlist (mostly older AHK V1) on messages here.

Watchout for the Hit Test when Sending Messages
Watchout for the Hit Test when Sending Messages


Tips on Extending Classes in AutoHotkey

During a team meeting Isaias was giving us a little lesson on working with Classes.

You can check out the tutorial here.

Tips on Extending Classes in AutoHotkey
Tips on Extending Classes in AutoHotkey

If your using Functions in AutoHotkey, but not classes, our Objects course is a perfect fit for you!

We cover the basics of using Classes in AutoHotkey as well as introduce people to Functions.

And don’t forget our courses come with a 200% money-back guarantee so you have nothing to lose❗

200% Money Back Guarantee badge with a yellow and green starburst seal for AHK courses


Improving People’s Lives: Story #43

Kenneth Aar, an AHK Hero member, Introduced us to Scribe the other day (check out this video).

We signed-up and are now creating great little tutorials for people for our clients which will greatly reduce the amount of technical support calls they receive!

How This Hidden Tool Makes Documentation Magically Simple
♂️ How This Hidden Tool Makes Documentation Magically Simple


What we’re reading


AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage


⚡️Productivity tips:

Alt + Shift + Up/Down Arrow – Move selected sentences / paragraphs up or down in most editors


A spot of Humor Dilbert does Tech Support

Dilbert: Reboot
Dilbert: Reboot


What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #81

This week I was surprised when we had 490 AutoHotkey files worked on!

I realized much of it was just adding a “Dev Path” to our scripts.

So this week’s episode was a bit shorter than normal.  You can check it out here.


Client’s say…

“My mind is blown” — Kelly Coughlin


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

Consider joining the AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 393 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

You can watch 1 hour a day for a year and not repeat content! That’s a lot of AHK Learning!

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

  • Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • Using a “Non-space” space to align an image
  • Window tilted: ‘No Active Window!’; GrepWin is your friend!
  • What: A_ThisFunc, -1, -2 mean in a class
  • Likely problem when you have an issue that requires you to restart your script

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


️ Quotable quotes

  • It’s easy to see stupid in other people — Dan Kennedy
  • If every request is a five alarm fire, it’s your house that’s gonna go up in flames — Amy Landino
  • Failure is not the opposite of success; It’s a part of it! — Anonymous
  • When experiencing problems with tools, typically you should blame the operator, not the tool — Joe Glines

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

Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff


P.S. As I spell-out in the Intro, I do think anybody reading this CAN (given enough time and effort) do anything they want.  But the truth is most of us already have too much to do!

If you’re needing more time, consider hiring us to solve your automation problems.

I guarantee you’ll be happy that you did!   Check my calendar and book a meeting by clicking here.

2025-02-27 Einstein was no Einstein

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

Did you that Einstein was a “late talker” starting at around 4-5 years old?   He was also very un-organized and his teachers didn’t think him “exceptional”.

I think a lot of people give up on things merely because they started on a topic that was “beyond their grasp”.

Or they watch other people solve complex problems but fail to realize the person solving it has been working in their field for YEARS.

It’s one of the reasons I hate the use of affirmative action in colleges.

It often puts people amongst peers that had better resources & education for 15 years and now they are expected to be able to handle the same workload.

It’s the main reason why so many end-up dropping out / not getting their degree.

It’s why we customize our answers during the AHK hero calls to the person’s knowledge level .

Its also why we reserve Saturday’s hero calls for “entry level” questions.  People need to feel comfortable asking their questions amongst other people that are working at the same level.

Imagine if you came to us never having worked in AutoHotkey and purchased our Functions, Objects and Classes course.  You’d hate both it and AutoHotkey!

But if you started off with our Intro to AutoHotkey course, you would have loved both AutoHotkey andour course!   (Thankfully both come with a 200% money-back guarantee so, in reality, there is no risk.)

But next time you witness someone solve something beyond your grasp ask yourself

“Does that person have knowledge I don’t?”

And, if you want to be able to keep-up with them; go out and get that knowledge !

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

Does Microsoft have Saboteurs?

The more I changes I see in Windows, the more I think there is someone at Microsoft has employees that are purposefully sabotaging them!

For instance, why would someone create the Do not Disturb capability but then make it so difficult to turn in on/off?

That’s why we created Toggle Do Not Disturb.  This makes it super-easy to enable/disable Do not Disturb as you can see in this video.

How to easily Toggle Do Not Disturb in Windows 11
How to easily Toggle Do Not Disturb in Windows 11

If you like that tool you might also enjoy our Toggle Bluetooth which was started by Connie, an AHK Hero member and completed during an AHK Hero call.


Improving People’s Lives: Story #38

Anthropic just released Claude 3.7 which allows for adjusting the amount of “reasoning” via the API.

Danny, one of our Radiologist, relies heavily on Claude so we updated our Claude API Class to use the new model (and the new “thinking” parameter.)

This will let Danny decide just how much thought he want’s AI to give a topic!

You can check out the new property in this video.

Update to Claude AHK Class: Now has 3.7 Sonnett & “Thinking” parameter
Update to Claude AHK Class: Now has 3.7 Sonnett &


My Good Morning Alexa Routine

I mainly about Desktop Automation however I do a lot of other types of Automation as well like Marketing Automation, Statistical work (Here’s one of my other YouTube channels on SPSS Macros) and Home Automation.

For instance I have Amazon Echos in every room and have been using them for ~13 years.

In this video I show my “Good morning” routine.   Routines are great way to combine a bunch of actions together.

Home Automation with Alexa My Good Morning Routine
Home Automation with Alexa My Good Morning Routine


What we’re reading


AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage


⚡️Productivity tips: This bites!

Use Ctrl + Shift + L to apply the Bullets command in Microsoft Word


A spot of Humor   Some Dad Humor

Just read an interesting fact – Bruce Lee had a vegan brother;

Broco Lee


What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #76

This week we dive into a lot of interesting topics in what we Automated with AutoHotkey.  Be sure to catch the video here.

What we Automated with AutoHotkey #76
What we Automated with AutoHotkey #76


Client’s say…

“My mind is blown” — Kelly Coughlin


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

Consider joining the AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 378 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

You can watch 1 hour a day for a year and not repeat content! That’s a lot of AHK Learning!

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

  • Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • Claude 3.7 and new “thinking” option in API
  • Modularizing your Code: Tips & Tricks
  • How to prevent cached responses when doing HttpRequest?
  • Not creating multiple copies of code but ensuring the right version is used
  • Auto-listing Variables / Words as you type
  • Inexpensively Creating AI Chatbots

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


️ Quotable quotes

  • Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way — Abraham Lincoln
  • The amateur does not know what to do. The master knows what not to do — James Cleary
  • Create exceptional Opportunities for Exceptional People — Dan Kennedy

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

Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff


P.S. Don’t be intimidated by topics or people.   YOU can learn anything, if you apply yourself and start at the correct level!

If you’re wanting to move forward in your AutoHotkey knowledge, but don’t know where to start, we can have a quick assessment call and I can point you in the right direction.

Just reply to this email and we’ll figure out a time to have a quick chat.