Some media players support global hotkeys either by mapping global hotkeys or by supporting media keyboards that ship with keys to play, pause or skip media.

Media Player Hotkeys (MPH) is a free portable software by Donation Coder member Skwire that adds hotkey support for a variety of media players.

The program supports more than 20 different media players, including Winamp, Windows Media Player, Foobar, AIMP or Media Player Classic.

The supported players page lists all player names, process names and compatibility information. The information indicates if certain commands are not supported by the selected player.

New hotkeys are created in the Hotkeys tab. Start by selecting an action from the pulldown menu at the top. Available actions that can be mapped are play, pause, stop, previous, next, volume up, volume down, mute, show / hide player, and show popup menu.

The Add hotkey button opens a configuration menu where the selected action can be mapped to a global hotkey. Available for selection are modifiers, standard keyboard keys but also special keys only found on some keyboards.

The new hotkey is displayed in the program window afterwards. Please note that hotkeys control all supported applications. The order there determines the application the hotkey is submitted to.

Hotkeys are functional right after they have been created, and for as long as the program is running in the background. Please note that configuration information are saved in the same folder the program is started from.

Media Player Hotkeys is a great lightweight program for Windows users who’d like to use global hotkeys when playing media on their system.

The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

HotKeyMan is a lightweight hotkeys manager for Windows. The program comes with a pre-configured set of hotkeys that are ready to use, and options to configure additional hotkeys.

The pre-configured hotkeys are the following:

• Windows–, Minimize the active window
• Windows-*, Maximize the active window
• Windows-S, to create a screenshot
• Windows-N, to open a file in notepad

New hotkeys are defined in the program’s settings. First, a keyboard combination needs to be selected. Available are a key on the keyboard in combination with the Windows, Alt, Ctrl or Shift keys.

The action and parameters are configured in the next and final step. Available actions include:

• Maximizing and minimizing the active window
• Closing the active window
• Opening a file or program
• Opening a website
• Take a screenshot of the active window
• Take a screenshot of the whole screen
• Exit Windows
• Send keystrokes

Probably most interesting in this regard are the actions to open a file or website, and to send keystrokes. It is for instance possible to map the five most used programs and websites to hotkeys to open them as fast as possible.

The ability to send keystrokes to the active program is not as advanced as that of specialized macro recorders. Still, it serves a few purposes from configuring signatures to text that is often needed.

HotKeyMan uses less than 10 Megabytes of RAM when running on the system, an acceptable figure. The program is available for download at the developer website. It has been tested on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7, and should run fine on other editions and versions of the operating system.

The following guide explains how to set system wide keyboard shortcuts for websites, to launch those websites in the default web browser by pressing those shortcuts. The functionality is built into Windows, and requires no third party programs.

Keyboard shortcuts can be configured for url files, which Microsoft’s Internet Explorer creates when sites are added to the favorites in the browser. We recommend to start the 32-bit edition of Internet Explorer for this.

Start by visiting a website that you want to create a shortcut for. Now click on Favorites > Add To Favorites to add the site to the bookmarks in Internet Explorer.

internet explorer favorites

A click on the add button saves the new Internet shortcut in the selected folder. It may be best to create a special folder with those Internet sites.

website shortcut

Each individual shortcut needs to be edited now, this can be done in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer by clicking on Favorites, and right clicking the Internet shortcut and selecting Properties, or by opening the Favorites folder in Windows Explorer. Windows 7 users find it under C:\Users\username\Favorites.

web document shortcut

Locate the shortcut key field. It displays none by default. Clicking in it, and pressing a keyboard shortcut will set that combination as the active shortcut. It is for instance possible to use some of the F-function keys on the keyboard for this, or more complex shortcuts that make use of Alt, Shift or Ctrl.

You can for example configure Ghacks to always open when the F5 key is pressed. This works as a global shortcut, which means it can be triggered from any application window or the desktop (unless the app blocks the key).

A program to display all reserved and configured shortcuts may come in handy. ActiveHotkeys, developed by a Donation Coder member Tranglos is exactly the program needed for this. The program will test all possible selected keyboard combinations and report the active ones. To find out if F keys are taken one would select None as the modifier, and Function keys as the key group. Active Hotkeys is a very handy program for this purpose.

active hotkeys

It is usually a good idea to select at least one modifier for the Internet shortcuts, e.g. Ctrl or Alt to avoid incompatibilities with software programs that may have reserved keys for program specific functions.

Have another tip that you want to share? Let us know in the comments.

It is furthermore possible to configure Trix to export date to email, excel, notepad or word and use the program for easy text transformations.

The program adds an icon to the Windows System Tray upon startup which can be right-clicked to access the settings. Here it is possible to configure the active commands and their corresponding keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts always use a combination of CTRL, Win and Shift with a keyboard key.

The Trix commands list can also be opened by configuring a hotkey in the program settings. The standard way to open them on the screen is Ctrl-` which can be changed if necessary.

This command list displays the most popular commands on startup. The all and newest links on top link to different command listings.

Commands can be executed by clicking on them or pressing the configured hotkey that is displayed in the application window’s status bar.

Trix can be a very helpful application for users who often make use of the commands provided. The program currently lacks an option to add custom commands to the list. The available commands on the other hand should be enough to satisfy the needs of most users who work with the software.

Trix can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

There is however no hotkey manager available that displays those shortcuts and provides the means to create new keyboard shortcuts. That’s where third party software like WinHotkey can aid the user.

WinHotKey is a lightweight software program for the Windows operating system that provides the means to create new system wide hotkeys in Windows.

It should be noted that these hotkeys will only work if the software is running in the background. Users who only want to launch specific programs with hotkeys are therefor encouraged to create those hotkeys in the program’s properties dialog. This has the advantage that no third party program needs to be running for the hotkey functionality.

WinHotKey does however have its purposes. It makes it more comfortable to manage hotkeys in Windows. Another benefit of the software program is that it can create hotkeys for various purposes, not only for the purpose of launching a software. The hotkey software can be used to

• Launch an application
• Open a Document
• Open a Folder
• Automatically type some text

WinHotkey displays the built in Windows hotkeys by default which can be disabled in the program’s interface.

New hotkeys are created easily in the software. All it takes is to specify a key combination to trigger the action and the action itself.

Advanced parameters can be configured for launching applications including launch parameters and starting the application minimized, maximized or normally.

All hotkeys are displayed in the main interface of the program from where they can be edited or removed from the computer system.

WinHotkey can be downloaded from Softpedia. It is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system.

Here is a short overview:

• Text actions: to copy texts automatically into your current application e.g. OutlookHtml actions: to do the same as above though in a HTML format; this also allows simply copying to the clipboard rather than to the active application.
• Open actions: automate the opening of files whether on your local drive or on the Internet. the Internet.
• Launch actions: automate the opening of tools and execution of DOS or Windows commands, including support for parameters.
• Ram actions: used to minimize the RAM usage of your applications, very handy if you sometimes run out of RAM with your setup.
• Win actions: multiple multi-screen actions such as fast switch and maximize, snap windows to the sides of your screen, tray applications, hide windows or task bar, etc.
• Capture actions: allows you to capture your whole screen, a window or an area you draw on your screen, to save it as an image in a file or your clipboard, or to send it to TFS or an image editor.

Signo will add an icon to the Windows system tray after startup. A right-click on that icon will display the list of available hotkeys and associated commands. These can be executed by clicking on them or by pressing the hotkey that is associated with the command. The same context menu provides access to the hotkey configuration which can be used to add, edit or delete hotkeys. Some of the interesting hotkeys that can be created include hotkeys to replace text entered by the user automatically into other text or html. It is for example possible to replace the text #s whenever it is written with a signature which could come in handy when writing emails.

Some available actions have been taken from the developer’s other application Minimem. Hotkeys are provided to reduce the memory usage of the running web browser processes or all system processes.
Signo offers much and could be a great hotkey manager for many users. The downside is the rather high computer memory usage of about ten Megabytes in its minimized stage and that it requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 which some users might not like at all. Everyone else can download Signo from the developer’s website.

Active Hotkeys is a lightweight computer software program for the Windows operating system that can display all active hotkeys of a computer system. It does so by testing all possible combinations. The main interface offers two selectors on the left side. The first is called modifiers and is a selection of Alt, Windows, Ctrl and Shift combinations that can be selected. It is possible to test all combinations or only selected ones. Selecting only the Windows modifier will only check the selected keys in combination with the Windows key but not Alt, Ctrl or Shift.

The second group are key groups. This ranges from alphabetical over numbers to functional keys and punctuation. It is again possible to select some or all of these key groups. A user selecting all modifiers and all key groups would test all possible Windows hotkey combinations on his computer system. A right click on one of the two selection groups displays quick selection possibilities, e.g. checking all items, or only two-key modifiers.

The program will then test the selected combinations and display all results in the main window.

The results list can be sorted by various parameters including modifier, key, active state and others. The program cannot tell which application registered the key as Windows does not provide these information. Active Hotkeys is a portable software for the Windows operating system that has been published at the Donation Coder forum.

I recently discovered Qliner Hotkeys which is in my opinion close to perfect. The real advantage of Qliner Hotkeys is that it displays a graphical keyboard of all hotkeys currently in place. Users can drag and drop softwares around and browse their system for applications to add to spare keys.

All hotkeys use the Windows key plus another key on the keyboard which means that you always press two keys to start the applications. Qliner Hotkeys has about 20 hotkeys already in place after installation. Most start default Windows applications like Notepad, Wordpad or the Internet Explorer.

Those hotkeys can be moved around as well or deleted if the user does not need them at all. To open Notepad the user would press Windows + N for instance. If Notepad would already be open on the system it would be brought to the front as the active window instead.

I have assigned the softwares that I use most – Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, FTP, Putty and WinSCP3 – to the F1-F12 hotkeys. The overlay keyboard that is used to display the hotkeys can be activated by pressing the Windows key for five seconds. Pressing Windows + Z toggles the keyboard so that you can drag and drop everything you want to assign new hotkeys.

It is even possible to add URLS as hotkeys. This means that you can add your favorite websites as hotkeys to access them even faster than before.

On the downside: Qliner Hotkeys uses roughly 35 Megabytes of RAM. Not a problem if you have plenty of it but computers with only 512 Megabyte of RAM or less will probably have difficulties using the software.

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Qliner Hotkeys