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A hotkey wouldn't work because it basically disables that key when pressed. So if Alt was done as a hotkey instead, then you wouldn't be able to press Alt to show the menu bar on a window (because the hotkey code "swallows" the keypress). At the moment it's done as a keyboard hook, which is why it lets you drag the window and also press it to see the menu bar. To support custom keys, I'd need to code it for every key on the keyboard, which I'm not going to do. Sorry!

Hi Graham. Yes, this is coming in the next update.

Question: How to get a macOS style "Quick Note" on Windows? (Hover mouse to the corner/side to open a note)

"I really love the Quick Note feature on macOS where you just move your mouse cursor to the bottom-right corner (or side) of the screen, and a quick scratchpad notes window pops up instantly. smth like that on windows?"

You can use this short action with AlomWare Toolbox to do so. Just run it, and whenever the mouse is put in the bottom-right corner of the desktop, the app opens to its "Notes" tab.

Code Select Expand

(Start)
HOW TO USE: Copy from Start to End, and then paste into an action.
REFERENCE : See an example of pasting at alomware.com/paste.png
0001 Wait: For the mouse to be "{=deskw$-1},{=deskh$-1}"
0002 Toolbox: Show the tab named "Notes"
0003 Wait: For the mouse to be "moved"
0004 Action: Go to start ""
(End)
Explanation of the steps:

• Waits for the mouse to be at the desktop's width and height (minus 1 pixel for each).
• Opens AlomWare Toolbox's window and jumps to the "Notes" tab for you.
• Waits for the mouse to be moved anywhere, which in this case is off the bottom-right corner.
• Goes back to step 1 to wait for the mouse to be at the bottom-right corner again.

If you wanted the action to show the "Notes" tab when the mouse is at the right side of the screen, just edit step 1 to be this:

Code Select Expand

0001 Wait: For the mouse to be "{=deskw$-1},#"
If you'd prefer a hotkey to show "Notes" instead, then you can use this single-step action (which has no mouse polling):

Code Select Expand

(Start)
HOW TO USE: Copy from Start to End, and then paste into an action.
REFERENCE : See an example of pasting at alomware.com/paste.png
0001 Toolbox: Show the tab named "Notes"
(End)

Yes, it will.

For the next update: added a new automation step called "String: Create note", which creates a new note in the "Automation" tab with the text of the assigned string.

I don't think I can detect the currently open/active tab

Just added a "curtab$" variable for the next update, so you can know.

[string$]

It's just a plain-text area to save/edit quick searchable notes. Not really much to it, hence no mention on the home page. But maybe I should.  In the next update you'll be able to add notes from whatever text the string$ variable holds, which can be handy.

A very cool tip, Graham!

I totally forgot about action backups. I promise to do it soon. I don't want to do the add-to-note thing because that's more of a custom request and I prefer to avoid those. To find backed-up actions, I'll see what I can do.

Hi GrahamB. This can be done with an action like below. In the action, I'm using Winamp as the music player, so edit steps 2 and 3 to be what your music player's folder and exe name is.

Code Select Expand

(Start)
HOW TO USE: Copy from Start to End, and then paste into an action.
REFERENCE : See an example of pasting at alomware.com/paste.png
0001 Window: Assign active ""
0002 Computer: App launch "D:\[Apps]\Winamp\Winamp.exe"
0003 Wait: For a window to appear "Winamp.exe"
0004 Wait: For milliseconds to pass "25"
0005 Action: Allow failure messages "0"
0006 Window: Activate for use ""
(End)

Explanation of the steps:

Step 1 tells the action to remember the current active window (if any).
Step 2 launches the music player (Winamp).
Step 3 waits for Winamp's window to appear.
Step 4 waits for 25 milliseconds after Winamp's window opens to ensure it's ready.
Step 5 tells AlomWare Toolbox to silently end the action here if a window wasn't active in step 1.
Step 6 switches the focus back to the original active window (if a window was active in step 1).

The "numpad#" trick has been there since the beginning.

Also for resizing a window, you can specify "numpad3" to resize the window to the bottom-third of the desktop, or as "numpad5" to center it in the middle of the desktop, and even as "numpad46" to resize it as a strip across the middle-third of the desktop (since keys 4 to 6 are across the middle of the numeric keypad).

[numpad3]

Quite often the question arises of how AlomWare Toolbox compares to AutoHotkey. Basically, AutoHotkey is a full programming language, whereas AlomWare Toolbox is more of a scripting tool that can achieve similar things to AutoHotkey but on a smaller and less technical scale. This is partly why AlomWare Toolbox was created: because AutoHotkey is just too hard and complicated for the everyday PC user to deal with. Not everybody is a programmer, and neither do they want to invest the time and effort into becoming one.

So, let's compare both products to see how they'd automate the task of opening the Windows Calculator, move it to the bottom-right of the desktop, and set its transparency level to 75%.

With AutoHotkey, the coding (which is always done by manual typing) is like this:

Code Select Expand

Run, calc.exe
WinWait, ahk_exe CalculatorApp.exe

SysGet, WorkArea, MonitorWorkArea
WinGetPos, , , WinW, WinH, ahk_exe CalculatorApp.exe
NewX := WorkAreaRight - WinW
NewY := WorkAreaBottom - WinH
WinMove, ahk_exe CalculatorApp.exe, , %NewX%, %NewY%

; Set transparency to 75%
; 255 = fully opaque, so 75% = 191
WinSet, Transparent, 191, ahk_exe CalculatorApp.exe

This is not very user-friendly to read, and has confusing data (specifying "191" for 75%), and as mentioned requires manual typing by hand. No, thanks.

By comparison, here's the exact same thing with AlomWare Toolbox, with easy-to-understand plain-English steps that are picked from a list instead of typing:

Code Select Expand

(Start)
0001 Computer: App launch "calc.exe"
0002 Window: Assign and wait to activate "CalculatorApp.exe"
0003 Window: Move to desktop position "numpad3"
0004 Window: Transparency "75"
(End)
Here's how the above action looks in AlomWare Toolbox:



As you can see, the AlomWare Toolbox version is much cleaner, clearer to understand, and has nice icons for visibility (unlike AutoHotkey).

FAQ: What does numpad3 mean in step 3 above? Well, think of your desktop as being like the numeric keypad on your keyboard. See how the numpad's "3" key is at the bottom-right of the keypad, as shown in the image below? This means to automatically position Calculator at the bottom-right of the desktop (no matter what size the desktop is at the time), saving you the hassle of calculating the bottom-right corner of the desktop manually. Nice! But having said that, you can always manually specify a desktop position by typing the screen co-ordinates in step 3 using an X,Y format instead of the numpad# format.

I can't reproduce the problem here.

As a test, can you change the hotkey trigger for your action to NOT use the Ctrl key, and report back? Set the hotkey to just be F9 or something. Or maybe the action still sees the Ctrl key being held down, so you might need to use the "Wait: For action hotkey to be released" step first at the start of your action.

I moved this topic to "General Discussion" because I don't think it's a Toolbox bug. It sounds more like a one-time glitch of something with Toolbox and your Windows update at the time. But if the problem can be repeatedly reproduced with instructions for me to follow, then I'll happily look into it as a bug.

BTW, Toolbox "resets" its trigger list when you refresh the Action list (like when holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the list header). Any clashing triggers will be shown in red.

Hi oblivion.

One caveat: it won't work if Toolbox isn't running as Admin -- or it won't for me, anyway.

That would normally be if Toolbox has been run as standard and you're trying to do something on an admin window. I'm considering forcing Toolbox to always run as admin by default in a future update, to avoid these issues.

I think it's an idiosyncracy of my PC -- they don't work reliably for me, so I've used the macro steps to replicate copy and paste with some fifth-of-a-second delays plugged in, which DOES seem to be solid on my kit.

I've emailed you a test version that should make "Keyboard: Cut", "Keyboard: Copy" and "Keyboard: Paste" work better. Please let me know by replying in this topic. Thanks!

hitting Caps Lock, forgetting it's on and typing a load of text with the case inverted.

There's a system tweak in "Settings" that can partially assist with that: