Home Posts tagged "object oriented programming AutoHotkey"

Tag: object oriented programming AutoHotkey

AHK News 2025-11-27- Things I am Thankful For

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

It is Thanksgiving here in the United States.

I’m very thankful that, in the grand scheme of things, I have much more to be thankful for than I have to complain about.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday as it is the least “commercialized” and mostly around spending time with Family & Friends.

My son and I are out in Las Vegas visiting my father.   It’s been a good visit but I miss my home and will miss the delicious meal that my wife will be preparing.  (Yes, I miss my wife too…  LOL)

I’m very thankful my son found a Jr. College program that he enjoys and is excelling at.

I’m very thankful my 85-year-old father is in good health?

I’m thankful for YOU!   Without you, the-Automator would not exist so 

THANK YOU!

How about you %Name%?

Do you have anything to be especially thankful for this year?

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

sprinkling

RegEx101 vs. RegEx in AutoHotkey

Last week, during an AHK Hero call, Isaias reviewed the differences between using RegEx101 and using Regular Expressions in AutoHotkey.

It was a great session and you can check it out in this video extract.

AHK Regex versus RegEx101: What to watch out for ??
AHK Regex versus RegEx101: What to watch out for

Creating a simple Fuzzy match

A YouTube subscriber asked for a tutorial on how to adapt a normal search and make it a “Fuzzy” search.

Irfan showed how simple it is to change your search to Ordered characters with a Regular Expression. Check it out in this video.

Changing Search to Fuzzy Match
Changing Search to Fuzzy Match

Don’t forget, we have an amazing Intro to RegEx course that comes with a double your money back guarantee!

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

Tracking Down a bug with Git Bisect

We had a weird bug in AHK Script Maker.   Isaias mentioned he’d like to use a cool feature from git to make it easier.  We walk through how to do it in this video.

Tracking down issues with git-Bisect : Great tips to save Time?
Tracking down issues with git-Bisect : Great tips to save Time?

Improving People’s Lives: Story #72

I spent some time yesterday with a client here in Las Vegas.

We walked through various uses of both AI and AutoHotkey (and how they fit together to make a “Batman and Robin” team!)

?? What we’re reading

?? AI News that you Need to Know

??Productivity tips:  

Control+Shift+L will apply Bulleted list to selected text in MS Word

?? A spot of Humor:  As God is my witness…

WKRP Turkey Drop
WKRP Turkey Drop

Clients 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 493 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
  • AHK Script Maker: Creating/managing Tabs
  • Adding Popular Programs to our v2 AHKHotkeyString tool
  • Comparing Cloned objects versus Copied Objects / Strings
  • Z-order of Windows tool from Claude Sonnet 4.5
  • Creating a Hash versus Encoding
  • 5 Git commandsthat feel like Magic
  • Using a Ternary to easily apply changes based on logic (instead of using an “if”)
  • Comparing strings, case sensitivity, how to handle when in map, etc.
  • Using SendTo for passing multiple files to a script

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

  • Never give up, never surrender, and always go for the win. — Charlie Kirk
  • Poverty is a state of mind not the state of your wallet — Joe Glines
  • Knowledge is power; Automation knowledge is a super-power?? — 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 and staff

P.S. Thank you for being a loyal reader / subscriber!

 

Why My Driveway Upgrade Was the Best Time Hack of the Year❗

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy,

I moved “to the country” mid Covid.   We bought a house with 7 acres (and I still love it!)

One of the few things I didn’t like about our move was how dusty my office would get because I was closest to our gravel/dirt driveway.

Around twice a year I’d “amuse” my wife and use a leaf blower to “dust” my office.

This saved me a ton of time and did a decent job with little work.

About a month ago I sold our last rental home and I had extra cash so I decided to redo our driveway with crushed asphalt.

HOLY COW ! 

My only regret is that I didn’t do it years ago!

Now I know just how people feel when they hire us to automate their tasks.

I can rest peacefully knowing I’ve made a sound investment and will not have to blow-out my office.

And my entire family can breathe easier❗

%Name%, what things can you pay for now that will prevent future work❓

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

AutoHotkey to the Rescue

This is how I feel when I meet new clients for the first time. How about you %Name%?


AutoHotkey to the Rescue

Easily Transcribe Multiple Media Files

Our Transcribe & Summarize tool is quite amazing!  It’s got lots of “bells & whistles” however, if you only want transcripts, it was overkill.

So we created our Transcriber tool that lets you drag multiple files to it and it will transcribe them.  There is an option to create a summary, but that’s all.   Check it out in this video.

Transcribe Multiple Video or Audio files with Transcriber
Transcribe Multiple Video or Audio files with Transcriber

Adapting our OCR tool to do more!

Our AI OCR tool is quite amazing at performing OCR on whatever you select from your screen however I realized it is easily adjustable to do much more!  In this video I explain my ideas and show how powerful it could be.

Adapting OCR for flexiblility
Adapting OCR for flexiblility

Change your Drive Icons

During an AHK Hero call I walked people through how easy it is to give yourself a visual reminder by adding icons to your Hard drives that show up in Windows Explorer (and most tools).

I’ve been doing this for 30+ years, but sometimes it’s good to cover the basics!

If you’ve never done this check out how easy it is in this video.

Easily Changing the Icons of your Drives
Easily Changing the Icons of your Drives

Improving People’s Lives: Story #71

Our client needed a quick way to transfer a lot of info from a Word Doc to an Online Survey.

I quickly wrote a “simple” loop that would allow him to copy 5 data points.   Then it would automatically switch to the questionnaire, parse the clipboard content, and paste in the respective fields.

It probably took me about 20 minutes of work but saved him hours (because he had a crazy long survey❗)

What we’re reading

AI News that you Need to Know

Welcome to Google Antigravity
Welcome to Google Antigravity

⚡️Productivity tips:  Play Hide-and-Seek with the Ribbon❗

Control+F1 Toggles the visibility of the Ribbon in most office programs (Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Word, etc.)

A spot of Humor:

Between Two Ferns bloopers Non stop laughter!

Between Two Ferns bloopers Non stop laughter!

What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #111

This week I dove into a ton of AutoHotkey tools we’ve been building – everything from XML processing solutions for clients to launching our new ASM editor for just $4.99 (or Free if you have an All Access Pass)!

In this week’s video I walk you through about 20 different automation tools including hotkey managers, media players with extensive controls, invoice calculators with Stripe integration, and even a clever one-click incognito mode solution that AI helped me figure out.

What we Automated with AutoHotkey #111
What we Automated with AutoHotkey #111

It’s amazing how AutoHotkey keeps solving real-world problems and making tedious tasks disappear.

Come see what we’ve been cooking up!

Clients say…

I had no idea you could do this with AutoHotkey — Jim F.

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 490 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

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

  • Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • Regular Expressions: Differences between AHK and RegEx101
  • Ahk Script Maker
    • Searching your clipboard history
    • Adding notes that are “important”
    • Adding Check for Update
  • Creating a Hash versus Encoding
  • Adding a @Important and Note in VSCode to remind you of a problem
  • 5 Git commands that feel like Magic
  • Using a Ternary to easily apply changes based on logic (instead of using an “if”)

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

  • Work Hard; Be Curious; Be Honest❗— Joe Glines
  • It’s easy to see stupid in other people — Dan Kennedy
  • Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt — Mark Twain
  • Motion beats meditation — Gary Halbert

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 and staff

P.S. We have a lot of tools that help us work Smarter, not Harder.

What AHK programming tools help you get more done quicker❓

AHK News 2025-11-13: How to Identify Tasks for Automation

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy,

Previously I’ve made videos on how our brain works differently when we explain things to other people.

Well I’ve been blown away by how much more of my work I’ve been able to automate because of conversations I’ve had with my son (when I was training him to edit our vidoes)

Just like with debugging, you don’t have to be talking to an expert.

When you explain what you’re doing your brain “works differently.”

One of the best things the person you’re talking to can do to help is to question your assumptions.

Surprisingly I find it can help if the person is less knowledgeable about what you do.

They are more likely to, unwittingly, question your assumptions (because they don’t “know better”).

So my advice is to find somebody that’s willing to listen to you and explain your process to them.

Ask them for ideas on things to automate (just not how to do it).

When they propose something, don’t explain “why their suggestion isn’t possible.”

Think about what you would have to do in order to make it possible.

Remember to question your assumptions

Of course you could also just join an AHK Hero call and have a bunch of people throw ideas out to you…

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

explainingAHK

Identifying Path of #Included File

During an AHK Hero call Connie asked if we could “detect” where a given file had been Included from.

It was a pretty interesting challenge which we discussed in this video.

Identifying the #included path
Identifying the #included path

Backing Up Your Post

Have you ever been filling out a form / writing something in a browser and “lost” all the content of what you’ve written❓

That’s what Hero member Harry challenged us with.   Isaias came up with an interesting solution with AutoHotkey, and I offered a JavaScript version at the end with a Bookmarklet.

Auto Backing-up Forum post
Auto Backing-up Forum post

Why Shared Scripts Break

During an AHK Hero call we walked through this list of the Common Reasons why your AHK scripts might break when shared with others (or ran on a 2nd computer).

You can watch our discussion here.

Why Scripts Break when Shared
Why Scripts Break when Shared

Benefits of Setting your Working Directory

While developing AHK Script Maker, Hero member Connie found an issue where AutomateMyTask  would not run.

It failed to run because the script relied on relative paths but we failed to set the Working Directory with SetWorkingDir.

Check out the full discussion in this video.

Benefit of Set Working Directory and Relative Paths
Benefit of Set Working Directory and Relative Paths

Keep Computers up to date with Action1

For one of our clients we’re constantly pushing updated versions of our tools to their 9 computers.

Originally we had to remote in to each computer and transfer the files, however Isaias knew there had to be a “better way”.

After some research and testing we settled on Action1.

Learn more about this (mostly) free tool in this video.

Remotely control computers with Action1
Remotely control computers with Action1

Improving People’s Lives: Story #70

I was on a consultation call with AJ (the client we’re working on the 2nd keyboard tool for) when he mentioned how he needs to use a new hotkey 3 times in order to remember it.

After our call I sent him our HotKeyString lookup tool which can make it very easy to find those created HotStrings / Hotkeys.

What we’re reading

AI News that you Need to Know

Screen sharing and Highlighting with CoPilot
Screen sharing and Highlighting with CoPilot

⚡️Productivity tips:

Great Windows Hotkeys, do you know them all❓

Amazing Windows Shortcuts You Aren’t Using
Amazing Windows Shortcuts You Aren't Using

A spot of Humor:

If you’ve ever shot a pistol you know how ludicrous this is!

Lethal Weapon – “Target Practice”
Lethal Weapon - target practice

What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #110

In this week’s video, I walk you through a bunch of client projects and tools we cranked out with AutoHotkey – everything from creating a secondary keyboard that actually works on different hardware setups to wrestling with Google Sheets API (which was a fun adventure!).

We tackled some really cool automation challenges like capturing video content from the internet and building distributable programs that solve real-world problems.

It’s amazing how much tedious work you can eliminate when you get creative with AutoHotkey!

What we Autoamted with AutoHotkey #110
What we Autoamted with AutoHotkey #110

Clients say…

I am so thankful for all you are doing to help us in this conversion and our mission to produce a solid product. — Stephanie Holland

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 487 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

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

  • Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • Regular Expressions: Differences between AHK and RegEx101
  • Using Edit field to Filter a list
    • Change Search to “Fuzzy” match via RegEx
  • Adding Check for Update to Ahk Script Maker
  • Using a Ternary to easily apply changes based on logic (instead of using an “if”)
  • Changing show 50 on YouTube- rethinking our UIA script
  • Changing our Licenses to be a 1-time check instead of checking on start every time
  • Comparing strings, case sensitivity, how to handle when in map, etc.
  • Using SendTo for passing multiple files to a 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

  • The secret to getting things done is to get started; The secret to getting started is to divide your task into small pieces with “quick wins”. — Joe Glines
  • Never give up, never surrender, and always go for the win. — Charlie Kirk
  • Work hard, Be honest, Be kind — Buckin’ Billy Ray Smith

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 and staff

P.S. You really should get another set of eyes on your processes.

You’ll be amazed at how much more can be automated!