2 minutes
How-to: Add a backtick hotkey to Windows 10
Lately I have been really enjoying Obsidian as a personal knowledge base. It uses simple Markdown
files, which makes maintaining synchronized cross-platform access easy and low impact.
The problem
I recently ran into a small problem when I decided to change my workflow to run Obsidian on my Windows PC host machine, instead of inside my Kali or Ubuntu virtual machines. Until now, I have largely been running Obsidian on my Macbook and inside my working machines on my PC. However, when I went to start my first .md
in Windows, I quickly realized that my 65% keyboard lacks a `
/ ~
key. Not being able to type backticks, and thus write code
blocks, would make my markdown adventures a lot less convenient.
The Solution
Adding a hotkey mapping in Windows 10 is surprisngly easy, thanks to AutoHotkey. The AutoHotkey software is fully open-source and maintained by a non-profit foundation.
To add a backtick hotkey, simply create an .ahk
file and fill it with the following line:
^'::Send ```
Note: three ```
characters are needed, as the backtick ( `
) is the primary escape character in AutoHotkey scripts.
You now have an executable AutoHotkey script. If you place this file in the C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
directory, it will execute whenever Windows is started.