Speed Up Your Typing With AutoHotKey’s “Hotstring”

The previously covered autohotkey is a time saver when it comes to repetitive text. You can use it to ‘bind’ any keystroke to whatever phrase you want it to write.
For example, I tend to write my email a lot, so instead of typing “liveslick@gmail.com” all the time, I can simply and quickly bind any letters, such as “ls” and it will automatically replace “ls” with “liveslick@gmail.com”. Many of us have more than one email address, so we can simply have “em1″, “em2″, etc… or any hotstring for quick replacement to our many email addresses.

Another reason to use this is when inputting repetitive keys that might take a while to reach. The ampersand sign (&) is very useful but can be incredibly annoying to find when under pressure to write fast, such as when taking notes in class. Therefore, I made a script which replaces the numpad “-” sign with “&” for instant access. This may seem trivial and unnecessary, but the time it saves in the long run is immense.

To do this, first download autohotkey and install it.
Once installed, you can right click in any folder and choose New -> AutoHotKey Script. Then, right click the newly created script and choose Edit.

To define a hotstring, enclose the triggering abbreviation between pairs of colons as in this example:

::btw::by the way

For example, my file has some of the following code:

::ls::liveslick@gmail.com
::ls2::il[snip]@gmail.com
::ls3::tr[snip]@gmail.com
::ty::Thank You
NumPadSub::&

As you can see, I use ls, ls2, ls3 to quickly type my different email address, ty as a quick way of typing Thank You and the numpad “-” to become &. This has infinite possibilities. I hope it will benefit all of you.

For more info check out: http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Hotstrings.htm

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