AutoHotkey is a free, open source macro-creation and automation software utility that allows users to automate repetitive tasks. It is driven by a custom scripting language that has special provision for defining keyboard shortcuts, otherwise known as hotkeys.

https://www.autohotkey.com/

AutoHotkey is developed with Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022, which is a free download from Microsoft.

• Get the source code.
• Open AutoHotkeyx.sln in Visual Studio.
• Select the appropriate Build and Platform.
• Build.

The project is configured in a way that allows building with Visual Studio 2012 or later, but only the 2022 toolset is regularly tested. Some newer C++ language features are used and therefore a later version of the compiler might be required.

AutoHotkey v2 can also be built and debugged in VS Code.

Requirements:

• C/C++ for Visual Studio Code. VS Code might prompt you to install this if you open a .cpp file.
• Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 with the "Desktop development with C++" workload, or similar (some older or newer versions and different products should work).

AutoHotkeyx.vcxproj contains several combinations of build configurations. The main configurations are:

• Debug: AutoHotkey.exe in debug mode.
• Release: AutoHotkey.exe for general use.
• Self-contained: AutoHotkeySC.bin, used for compiled scripts.

Secondary configurations are:

• (mbcs): ANSI (multi-byte character set). Configurations without this suffix are Unicode.
• .dll: Builds an experimental dll for use hosting the interpreter, such as to enable the use of v1 libraries in a v2 script. See README-LIB.md.

AutoHotkeyx.vcxproj includes the following Platforms:

• Win32: for Windows 32-bit.
• x64: for Windows x64.

AutoHotkey supports Windows XP with or without service packs and Windows 2000 via an asm patch (win2kcompat.asm). Support may be removed if maintaining it becomes non-trivial. Older versions are not supported.