Work

Quickly Send An Email With A Hotkey

Reader Alex writes in with his ubergeeky solution for sending a quick email from his Gmail account—a tiny AutoHotkey application assigned to a hotkey.

Similar to Alex’s solution for quickly adding events to Google Calendar, you’ll need to add your Google Account credentials to the logon.txt file, launch the AutoHotkey script, and then use the Ctrl+` shortcut key sequence to bring up the quick-send dialog. Since it’s written in AutoHotkey, you can customise the script or the shortcut key to something that you prefer, and if you don’t want to expose your credentials you can always store the whole thing on an encrypted TrueCrypt partition.

Hit the link for the download, or for more, check out how to send email reminders to yourself with Launchy, use the Caps Lock key for hand-friendly navigation, or add Gmail shortcuts to Outlook with Gmail Keys.

AutoHotKey: command line Gmail AHK script [Just an Asterisk]

Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)

  • SenorDunda

    @SenorDunda: If anyone would like it, here's the Twitter popup status update AHK script I wrote/tweaked from a LH article I saw a while back that uses cUrl to update the Twitter api. It even tells you if your tweet is over 140 characters and lets you edit it without having to re-type it all. Note: you must have cUrl installed for it to work.
    Just replace "username" and "password" with your own info. Enjoy!

    ;-------------------------------...">-------------------------------......
    ; My Twitter Update Script
    ;-------------------------------...">-------------------------------......
    #t::TwitterUpdate()

    ScrollLock::TwitterUpdate()

    TwitterUpdate()
    {
    InputBox, Status, Twitter, Enter Twitter Status,,650
    If ErrorLevel
    return
    Else
    {
    StringLen, length, Status
    if length between 1 and 140
    {
    MsgBox, Your status has been updated. It is %length% characters.
    Run curl --basic --user username:password --data status="%Status%" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml,,Hide
    return
    }
    else if length > 140
    {
    clipboard =
    clipboard = %Status%
    MsgBox, Oh no! Your tweet is too long. It is %length% characters!
    TwitterUpdate()
    ; WinWait, Twitter
    ; Send ^v
    return
    }
    else
    return
    }
    }

    SenorDunda

  • SenorDunda

    This is a great idea. I made a similar script a few months ago for doing essentially the same thing for Twitter posting, but this may come in handy when I don't want to open up a browser for a quick email to someone.

    SenorDunda

  • BrettKS

    Office Space is my favorite movie.

  • fosphen

    I've been using this guide by The How To Geek, sans AutoHotKey. I have Gmail set as my default email client so it works pretty well.

    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/the-geek-blog/create-shortcuts-or-hotkeys-to-quickly-s...

  • yourbuddypal

    This solution is both Windows only and requires the .Net framework, right? The AHK script calls a little vb.net executeable that Alex wrote. Not a bad thing, just thought it was very noteworthy.

    yourbuddypal

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