Windows has no built-in right-hand alt-tab shortcut. The good thing is, you can create one with a simple trick. Follow the below steps to create a right-hand alt-tab shortcut in Windows 10.
Recently, I’ve been trying to use the mouse with my left hand. As soon as I switched the hands, I come to realize that most things are not designed with the left hand in mind. For example, there are no left-handed mouse cursors in Windows. Additionally, unless you have a special keyboard, there is no sane way to use the alt-tab functionality with the right hand.
Though Windows has no built-in options, you can create your own alt-tab shortcut for the right hand. Let me show you how.
Create Right-hand Alt Tab Shortcut
To create our own alt-tab shortcut, we are going to use the awesome AutoHotKey software. In case you don’t know, AutoHotkey, as the name suggests, lets you create custom shortcuts and even automate things to a certain extent.
1. First, install AutoHotkey if you haven’t already. You can install it like any other software.
2. Now, we need to create a new AutoHotKey script for the alt-tab shortcut. To do that, right-click on the desktop and select “New → Text Document”.
3. Now, rename the file to anything you want. Just make sure that you replace the .txt extension with .ahk. For example, I’m renaming the file from “New Text Document.txt” to “alt-tab switcher.ahk“.
Note: If you see a warning message while changing the file extension, click “Yes” to continue.
4. After renaming the file, right-click on it and select “Edit Script” option.
5. The above action will open the file in Notepad. Here, copy-paste the below code.
;Right-hand Alt Tab [press CTRL + \] Ctrl & \::AltTab return
6. Press Ctrl + S to save the file. You can also select “File → Save” option.
7. Close the file after saving it.
8. Now, double-click on the .ahk file and it will run silently in the background. You can see it sitting in the taskbar on the right-hand side.
That is it. From now on, use Ctrl + \ shortcut as the right-hand alt-tab switcher.
Of course, the shortcut is my personal preference as both the Ctrl and \ keys placement closely resembles the alt-tab keys on the left side.
If you don’t like the shortcut, you can customize it in any way you want. For example, one of my friend’s use the ] + \ as the alt-tab shortcut. All you have to do is modify the first part (before ::) in the second line. Here’s a great AutoHotKey document that lists all the various commands you can use for different keys on your keyboard.
That is all. Hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.
If you like this article, do check out 50 most useful Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts.
Hi. I did as described but it doesn’t work.
Hi,
I just recreated the steps on my machine and it worked as it should.
Make sure you followed the steps as-is and don’t forget to rename the file so that it has “.ahk” extension instead of “.txt”.