Casual Hex

While I’d love to have a MacBook Pro I’m stuck using my wife’s Dell Inspiron 1501 whenever I need something portable. After finally getting used to the similar functions of CTRL and ALT (er, that’s COMMAND, bucko) in Windows being pretty much reversed in OS X three years ago it can be a real mess now when I’m using Windows. I don’t want to get used to both. I’m not even sure if I can.

So what can I do? I can easily switch the key actions in OS X to match those of Windows. But I’m not doing that. CMD (er, ALT for Windows users) C/V/X/A to copy/paste/cut/select all is easier than CTRL C/V/X/A. So… how do I change the keys in Windows? There’s no easy method in the control panel. I could dig into the registry and mess with the scancodes but that can be an ugly mess.

What about a nice little application to do all of that messy stuff for me? Might such a creature exist? With only a little digging into Google I found something! AutoHotKey will switch CTRL and ALT around in Windows for anyone used to Mac OS X. It’s easy to install and it’s easy to configure. It’s also free. What more could I ask for?

AutoHotKey is capable of so much more than simple key re-mapping, so once you’ve downloaded it why not check out the documentation and add a few other extra Mac-like keyboard commands to your Windows system? The potential is great within this one.

Oh! Here’s the simple script (only 279 bytes) that I created to remap the CTRL and ALT keys. Just toss it somewhere on your system after installing AutoHotKey and run it whenever you want to switch your keys around. Hit WinKey-Q to exit the script.