If you want to automate things on your PC, AutoHotKey is one of the best ways to do it. It's a powerful tool that can simulate inputs on your PC, and the best thing about it is that it's free. It can be as simple or as complex as you like, and it can speed things up for you considerably depending on what you need to do.

A word of warning though if you play any competitive esports titles: AutoHotKey can flag as a cheating program in the eyes of a lot of anti-cheat software if it's running while the game is running or you invoke any scripts while the game is running. Be careful and research before you use it if you are worried. With that out of the way, here are things that AutoHotKey can do that can speed up your PC usage considerably.

5 Text expansion

Automatically type for you

Do you ever have to type a specific string or piece of text frequently? Maybe an email, a signature, or even something relating to programming? AutoHotKey has a very basic text expander that works wonders, and will work in any application that's open on your PC. To create an email expansion script, create a script like so:

::emailme::

When you execute it, what's inside of the double colon will trigger a replacement for your actual email address. In this case, typing "emailme" will replace the text with your email address.

4 Media controls

Pause, play, and control volume

If you listen to a lot of music and want to control what's playing from your keyboard, AutoHotKey has complete support for media playback management. While some keyboards have controls built in for media playback, this will work well for your keyboard if it doesn't have support built in. You can enable a pause/play button with Ctrl+Shift+' with the following code in an AutoHotKey script.

^+'::Send, {Media_Play_Pause}

You can also invoke {Volume_Up} and {Volume_Down} with the same syntax so that you can modify what key binds will do that. For example, you can change it to Ctrl+Shift and Up arrow to increase the volume. It works for Spotify and any other media player that supports the Windows Media Control API.

3 Launch an application

Quickly and easily access programs

If you want to launch applications with a quick keybind, AHK is a great tool for that, too. You can make it so that it can launch any executable at any file path, meaning you can launch something like Notepad, Calculator, or any other application that you install, too. To get started, all you need is something like:

^!n::Run, notepad.exe

This will launch Notepad when you press Ctrl + Alt + N, and you can change "notepad.exe" to be a file path to anything on your computer.

2 Automate repetitive tasks

Manage your files in bulk

If you want to move a bunch of files in a folder for example, AutoHotKey can do that for you. AutoHotKey has loop options that you can use to go through a folder and operate on it. For example, this inside of a loop that checks for jpg files would move those images to a subfolder called "Images".

FileMove, %A_LoopFileName%, Images\%A_LoopFileName%

You'll need to be careful to define the correct folder for it, but AHK can make it really easy to move stuff around in bulk if you need to.

1 Window management

Move your windows around quickly

Windows has built-in functions to move your applications around and snap them to edges, and you can do that by holding the Windows Key and pressing an arrow key. For example, Windows + Left will move a window to the left, but AutoHotKey gives you more control over how you do that with the WinMove function. For example:

#Left::WinMove, A, , 0, 0, A_ScreenWidth/2, A_ScreenHeight

This will instantly snap a window to the left, skipping the animation. You can also do more complex things with it, like moving a window to the upper left corner or upper right.