whkd VS microkeys

in powertoys, find a feature called “keyboard manager”. if you want to go deep into keymapping in windows, checkout autohotkey and whkd

It was only when I started writing my own sxhkd-inspired hotkey daemon[1] for Windows that I really started to appreciate just how _good_ AHK is. Even just for hotkey binding, AHK does some incredibly clever stuff very transparently to provide for such an excellent end-user experience. For example, using system hooks automatically when the user tries to bind a hotkey combination that is reserved by the system (usually win+something) is implemented so well. Really excellent software and I miss it when I'm using Linux or macOS.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/whkd

I ended up using AHK for komorebi[1] because I was still new to Windows when I start writing it and I didn't wanna have to write a tiling window manager AND a hotkey daemon. I even ended up generating a nice little AHK library to wrap around CLI commands that sent socket messages to the window manager to make it easier to write a configuration.

Ultimately the syntax changes make it impossible to fully reproduce the same library for AHKv2, which is being installed by default on all mainstream package managers now.

I ended up biting the bullet and making my own hotkey daemon[2] for use with komorebi based on skhd[3] and I haven't looked back since. This will be the "blessed" hotkey daemon recommended for use in the next release of komorebi.

I'm still using AHK (v1) for the stuff that it's good at (and there is a lot of stuff that it's good at!), but ultimately I've found that it's not the right tool as a hotkey daemon for a socket-based tiling window manager.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

[2]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/whkd

[3]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

I wrote MicroKeys[1] out of a similar frustration. Granted, I never got past the POC stage, so it's not as feature rich as AHK, but it solved a very specific itch I had. I debate if I should flesh it out further, or try using AHK again.

[1] https://github.com/seligman/microkeys

And with a little bit of coercing, it can be used the other way: To embed Python in Desktop apps giving you a fairly light-weight Python interpreter.

I used it for a little Windows macro program ( https://github.com/seligman/microkeys ) . I got it to a POC stage to solve the precise problem I have, basically I needed to be able to do some simple text parsing on whatever's in the clipboard and type out the results, so I'm happy. I'm always curious if it potentially fills a need for others as well.

I'll join in:

I'm building a tool called MicroKeys. It's a macro program, for Windows right now. It uses MicroPython as the script engine to let you register hot keys that do things. It's very much a work in progress right now.

I'm writing it to fill a very specific niche I have, but if it's useful to others, I'd love to hear feedback on what it could do to be better to help it come to fruition.

https://github.com/seligman/microkeys

I'll be working to progress MicroKeys, my Windows MicroPython based macro program. It's ready for others to play with, if barely, but I do need to work on how it handles exceptions, and improve the debugging experience a bit.

I'll be working on progressing my MicroKeys project, a way to create macros for Windows and declare them using Python.

For a while I've been working on a little pet project, MicroKeys. It's a Windows app that embeds MicroPython, allowing the user to create macros that run Python functions in response to keys. The GIF on the readme shows the basic idea, when I hit Alt-Z, it runs the function and types out the result.