Windows Application Hotkeys are Broken

In Windows 11, custom hotkeys defined on shortcuts need to be placed in specific locations to work. Use AutoHotkey instead.

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By. Jacob

Jacob Kristensen (Turbulentarius) is a Web Developer based in Denmark. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Web Development at Zealand, focusing on learning React and refining his existing skills.

Edited: 2025-08-08 11:38

I noticed my Windows 11 keyboard shortcut for Windows Terminal stopped working after an update. Microsoft is notorious for sabotaging people's computers when running Windows Update, so much so that some people prefer blocking Windows update in their Firewall (I used to do that myself).

Windows 11 launch icons are different from program shortcuts, so you cannot right click on their icon to configure their behavior and hotkeys like you can with traditional programs, but they still launch from .exe files, so nothing seems to prevent you from creating a functional shortcut for them, and thereby define a hotkey combo — you just need to find the .exe!

Finding the file is actually easy through Task Manager, just right-click on the Windows Terminal process; you can find the location of its .exe in the Properties of the process.

If you want to bind a hotkey to launch a program like Windows Terminal, you might still be able to do so if you manage to find where the .exe is located in the filesystem; I relied on this method, but when I attempted to reapply the shortcut after the .exe location changed, I had some trouble getting it to work, and a shortcut on the Desktop seemingly required rebooting to get it to work.

People are discussing how you seemingly must place the shortcut in specific locations for it to work, such as:

• The Desktop
• C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
• %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

While this does seem to work, possibly sometimes requiring a reboot, obviously the shortcut key implementation in Windows is just inconsistent and unreliable — as is so many other things are in Windows 11. Years and years are going by without fixes to important problems.

Instead I decided to take matters into my own hands and create a centralized AutoHotkey script to manage all my custom hotkeys. This is no problem for me, as I used to be very good at AutoIt, and have even written tutorials for it (AutoIt is basically closed-source version of AutoHotKey).

A very simple script will solve all of our hotkey needs. Behold.

my-hotkeys.ahk:

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0

^!t::
{
        Run "wt.exe"
}

The ^!t part determines the key combination to press:

1. ^ = Ctrl
2. ! = Alt
3. t = t

When the script is run, it will stay in the background until terminated, but I also added it as a startup program in Task Manager to have it automatically start when I boot into Windows. I almost never turn off my system, but it's still a convenience to have it run automatically when I do.

Another way to make the script automatically start, is by adding a shortcut (link) to it in:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

And best of all... No more haunting for exe file locations manually when Microsoft decide to move them around.