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I would like to assign the key combination Win+A to a third party program.

In Windows 10, this hotkey is assigned to the Notification Center. The third party program throws an error when I want to use Win+A there.

Is it somehow possible to unassign Win+A (or other Windows reserved key combinations) from Windows?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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These keys are registered through explorer and that is the first thing that starts. Unfortunately its not possible to do a hack to get these shortcut keys to be used for anything else.

The first program that claims a hotkey basically gets to use it. You would therefor have to kill explorer entirely, claim the hotkey and then launch explorer. This however is not an option.

I wanted to use CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-WIN+w which is used for office and when you press it, it opens a website. I tried everything in my power to get that key, but its just not working reliably and cleanly. I can basically get the key, but then explorer doesn't start. If I do it manually, it will work, but I don't want to do it every single day.

So long story short: no, use a different key.

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  • It is possible to reassign a shortcut to a different shortcut, the Keyboard Manager included with Microsoft Powertoys lets you for instance map Win+A to Ctrl+A (optionally for certain applications only). I don't know what happens if an application expects Win+A, which it seems the OP is after. (I think it is questionable if an application uses Windows-key shortcuts, but that's a different story)
    – Berend
    Dec 2, 2021 at 10:16
  • @Berend to my knowledge this is not possible for the shortcut keys imposed from explorer. That program basically tries to capture the keys and reregisters them as a different key, but because explorer runs first, it can't do it.
    – LPChip
    Dec 2, 2021 at 10:24
  • I tried it and it does work
    – Berend
    Dec 2, 2021 at 12:17
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I managed to do it with one line of AutoHotkey like so:

#a::#^a

This sends WINKEY+CTRL+A to that other program when I press WINKEY+A.

The native function of Windows for WINKEY+A (Show Notification Center) gets blocked.

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