Ask the Readers: Single Key Shortcuts

Welcome to this new column that will greatly depend on the comments of each and everyone of you. I try to address situations, questions or uncertainties in this series that can be discussed and hopefully solved in the end. This time I’d like to ask a question about keyboard shortcuts.

I know that I can create keyboard shortcuts in Windows using program shortcuts. The problem that I have with this solution is that I have to use a key plus at least two of the following three keys: Shift, Alt or Ctrl.

I performed some tests on keyboard shortcut managers that would allow me to set keyboard shortcuts more easily. They all had the same restrictions though. What I wanted was a way to add a shortcut to a single key, say the keys F6 to F12 without running a program in the background all the time.

I discovered key demon which would add this functionality to the F6-F12 keys but only if it was running in the background. The second limitation of Key Demon was that it only made available keyboard shortcuts for those seven keys and no other key in Windows, say the Caps Lock key.

Is there a way to set permanent keyboard shortcuts to single keys ? What’s the best general keyword managing software anyway ?