Intro to AHK v2 HotStrings Extract
The key idea of the video is that hot strings in AutoHotkey are a simple and useful way to save time and standardize text input by creating text expansions triggered by small triggers.
- 00:00 🔥 Learn how to create hotstrings in AutoHotkey, a simple and useful way to save time and standardize text input.
- 00:51 💡 The course offers a double your money back guarantee within the first 30 days if you don’t find it valuable, encouraging you to work smarter, not harder.
- 01:26 🔥 A hotString is a text expansion where a small trigger expands to a larger piece of text, and this video demonstrates two ways to create hotstrings.
- 02:14 📝 Use a trigger, such as “ta”, followed by “::”, then type the desired expansion (e.g., a website URL), and use an ending character (e.g., tab, space, enter, or dot) to execute the expansion.
- 03:43 💡 HotStrings in AHK v2 allow for quick expansion of frequently used text, such as usernames and program names, saving time on typing and fixing typos, and there are options available to remove unwanted ending characters.
- 04:23 📝 HotStrings in AHK v2 allow for the insertion of specific text, such as adding a tab between words, which can be useful for filling out forms or entering passwords.
- 06:01 💡 The speaker discusses the use of special characters in hotkeys and the need to be careful with them to avoid unintended actions.
- 07:40 📝 To create dynamic hot strings in AHK v2, use the hot strings function and pass the hot string itself, followed by the text to be expanded, with the option to execute the creation of the hot string.
- To create dynamic hot strings in AHK v2, use the hot strings function and pass the hot string itself, followed by the text to be expanded.
- The function creates a hot string if the option is set to true, otherwise it does not execute the creation of the hot string.
Transcripts to How to Create a HotString in AutoHotkey
hey this is Joe Glines from the-Automator and in this video we’re going to have Isaias show you how to create HotStrings think of as like text expansion right you type something small and then bam you have the text that you want in Autohotkey they’re very simple to use it was the first AutoHotkey course that I ever did because they’re the hidden gems of AutoHotkey they’re so useful we should be using them all the timethis video is actually an extract from our intro to Intro to AutoHotkey in V2 course I’m
going to put a link up here if you’re interested in buying it we’ll give you 20 off if you click this link check it out it’s around four hours long this video most of the videos are three to five minutes long I think this one’s a little bit longer than that but HotStrings are a phenomenal way to save time and to standardize the text that you’re putting in somewhere you know when you have it or it’s repeated so I use them a lot I have hundreds and hundreds upon them sogive it a try
if you’re interested take a look at the course as I said thethe courses by the way come with a double your money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose is if you pay let’s say fifty dollars for the course we would pay you a hundred dollars if you said no I I didn’t think it was good quality right so within the first 30 days you’re eligible for a double your money back guarantee because our courses are really well put together and we have a lot of faith that you will see that value and
you’re going to start working smarter not harder so check it out I hope you enjoy it cheers one of the most interesting things that you can do without a HotStrings now what they are is that you just create a small trigger a few letters or a word that once you type it gets expanded to a bigger piece of text they’re so easy to create that is insane once you learn about this it’s going to be so you’re going to create so many of them very likely so let me show you in
this video I’m going to show you two ways of creating HotStrings and then I will talk about some options let’s go ahead and open a blank script in which I have already my directive setup and let’s go ahead and show you how to create a hot screen first of all you just go ahead and use the colon twice to indicate that whatever comes next is a trigger in this case let’s go ahead and use ta as trigger slash ta and whenever I type slash ta I want it to show a website for
the-Automator .
com and that is going to be my expansion so let’s go ahead and run that and let’s open a new file and type slash T8 now triggers don’t execute Automatically you have to use what is called an ending character usually by hitting tab space enter or a DOT for example it tells ourHotkey it just
goes ahead and shows your expansion which is great because a lot of times like my usernames most of the time websites that I visit very often a lot of program names that have some parameters all of that I just have them on HotStrings so that I don’t have to spend too much time fixing type typos or something like that right but let’s go ahead and take a look at how to createsome things that you have to keep in mind when you create these guys the ending characters might not be something that you want all the time so
in the other section I’m going to give you there’s a section in which I’m going to talk about some options that you can set to remove those things but before I get into that let me explain here on the right side is not simply literal text there are some things that get translated and let’s go ahead and take a look at that for example let’s say hello world now let’s say that I want to use the word hello here but the World Part I want to put it after a tab I could go ahead and open curly braces here use the
word Tab and close the curly braces and then world so instead of having hello world just with the space in between I want to have a tab in between so let’s save this up rerun it and if I use HW you will notice that I have Hello on one side at a tab in there and World on the other so this is something that it is amazingly useful in many cases I usually use this to fill out some username and password for example because I put my username in one side hit Tab and then my password or which the only thing that I wouldn’t
recommend about that I just do that on accounts that I don’t care about the password because you don’t want to save your passwords in a text file so but if it is an account that I have over there that have a lot of passwords that I don’t really care about then having these fill that out for me perfect you could use many Auto Keys like the enter key and some others in The Help file you can find the least of all the keywords that you can use for keyboard keys but not only that in ourHotkey there’s
three or Auto modifiers like the old the shift and control keys or the window Keys as well that have special characters that trigger them so just to illustrate these we will talk about those characters later on in that but just to illustrate what happens if you’re not careful with this is that the exclamation point is translated to an old key innerHotkey and you have to be careful because
if you put a letter right next to it it would try to trigger some actions like alt a might do something if it is a HotStrings this is what I’m just showing at the moment
are the static HotString
that’s the function that we’re going to be using we open a parenthesis and close it again that’s my function and in there I have certain parameters that I can pass the first parameter that I’m going to pass is the HotStrings and in this case I want to use the word new and then a coma and then the text that I want to expand it to this is a new Strength right there
you go this is how you create Dynamic HotString now if it is true it goes ahead and creates it because this option is true so this line is executed
condition these guys are not so these are the two ways of creating HotStrings and also how to deal with this translation and the ending characters which means we’re going to talk a little bit about options
