AutoHotkey Community

I don't know the exact problems you are experiencing but I'm guessing that you're probably trying to cram a lot a program with different "Escape" key requirements into the single "Escape To Close" group.

To simplify things, you might want to create a separate AHK group for every Escape key requirement and then create hotkey code for each group. For my personal use, I've created the following AHK groups:

$EscapeToClose - Escape To Close
$DEscapeToClose - Double Escape To Close
$EscapeToHide - Escape To Hide
$EscapeToMinimize - Escape To Minimize

The $EscapeToClose group follows the example I posted at the top. This group is designed to be used for applications where you want to close the application when the Escape key is pressed once.

For applications that "use Escape intrinsically", I created the $DEscapeToClose group that will close the application when the Escape key is pressed twice. I put EncSpot and Windows Calculator into this group. Both of these programs use the Escape key to perform a valuable function. When I press the Escape key when using these applications, the program does what it is supposed to do. Note the use of the "native" designation ("~") in the hotkey definition (below). However, if I press the Escape key twice in a row (within 350 ms), the program is closed.

The other groups are self explanatory (I hope).

The following are examples of the code that will process these groups:

You can create a group to represent any unique requirement. The only thing you don't want to do is to add a program to more than one of these "Escape to ..." groups.

I hope this helps. If not, make a noise. I'm sure that we can get you where you need to go.

Them be my thoughts...

I just use



that is WindowsKey + Esc, that way escape still works as normal.

I use the following script. If you double hit ESC, it closes the active window. In Firefox or IE7 it first closes the current tab, and if there is no more tab, it closes the window. Double-ESC is faster than Win-ESC, because you don’t need two fingers and don’t need to look down to the keyboard.

Another idea for the escape button is to use it as a save & close button, not just a close button. This eliminates the step of manually pressing ctrl + s, and makes it easier for me to quickly work with my todo list and AHK scripts in notepad. I accidentally disabled this once when editing the script, and I kept hitting esc over and over, thinking, "Why won't it work?!" Hehe. I use it a lot, never realized how much until it wasn't working.
Like so:

I just make new entries for each window class I want to use this for.