Hotkey Navigator

Windows never shows which key combinations are already taken, or by which program. Hotkey Navigator probes nearly fifteen hundred combinations in under a second and shows the result as a table and as a keyboard map: what is taken, by what exactly, and what is left.

Probes every combination

14 modifier sets across 106 keys — 1484 combinations in all, a full scan in under a second. And it is an answer rather than a guess: the program tries to take each combination itself and releases it immediately. Success means free, refusal means taken.

Names the owner

Windows shortcuts, a catalogue of system combinations (186 entries), layouts and input methods from the registry, running AutoHotkey scripts, the settings files and registry branches of the programs themselves, a catalogue of known applications (21 programs, 53 combinations). On an ordinary working machine, out of 195 taken combinations the owner is established for 194.

Fact and guess are kept apart

Where the owner is known for certain it says so, with a reference to the file, registry branch or script line. Where it is a guess, the guess is labelled as one — and the status bar counts the two separately. Where the holder cannot be known at all, the row says “unknown” instead of a plausible-looking name.

A keyboard you can press

The map highlights the taken keys, and the modifiers are pressed right on the drawn keyboard: turn on Ctrl and Alt and the rest of the keys recolour. Under the Win key alone an ordinary machine has about fifty combinations taken, almost none of them documented anywhere — point at a key and the program explains what it does.

Frees a combination and assigns a new one

A combination held by a shortcut can be freed and another one given in its place, knowing what is in the way: it shows at once whether the target combination is free or who holds it. With a backup and Ctrl+Z undo.

Catches the culprit

Press a combination and the program watches which application responds, then remembers the answer. The strength of the evidence is labelled honestly: “confident” or “likely”. This is how it reaches the shortcuts that programs intercept outside the system, with a low-level hook.

Warns about future conflicts

A combination may be free right now but written in the settings of a program that is currently closed — it will claim it at the next start. The program says so before you assign that combination to yourself.

Takes the result away

The table exports to CSV and the keyboard map to an image — a light palette for printing, a dark one for chats.

At a glance

• 1484 combinations — 14 modifier sets across 106 keys, scanned in under a second
• The owner named from shortcuts, the registry, AutoHotkey scripts and program settings
• Fact and guess counted separately, each with its source
• Keyboard map with the taken keys highlighted, modifiers pressed on the drawing
• The Windows system shortcuts revealed and explained key by key
• Freeing and reassigning a shortcut, with a backup and Ctrl+Z
• Catch mode: press a combination and see which application answers
• A warning before a combination that a closed program will claim back
• Export: the table to CSV, the keyboard map to a light or dark image
• Bilingual, Russian and English, switched on the fly — the manual too
• Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit), no installer, no network, no administrator rights