Remove unwanted app hotkey in windows

I'm using Windows 10 and an app I recently installed has set CTRL+M+O as a hotkey for launching itself, overriding a common shortcut for Visual Studio (collapse to definition). The problem is, I don't know how to disable it.

I tried searching for an .ink that had this assigned in Properties, but the only one I could find hasn't defined any hotkey. I couldn't find a shortcut manager in Windows to disable these "user-mapped" shortcuts. Can someone help me?

manoftheyear

Posted 2017-08-16T20:54:46.160

Reputation: 43

Answers

You can try using Shortcut Key Explorer from the good folks at RJL Software, which will scan your PC and find shortcuts with hotkeys saved in it.

http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/utility/shortcutkeys/download.shtml

Simply run Shortcut Key Explorer and it will automatically load the existing shortcut keys and display them in an easy to read list. From this list you can double-click on any item and edit the properties of the Windows shortcut. This is great for troubleshooting duplicate shortcut keys or shortcut keys you did not even know existed.

Yisroel Tech

Posted 2017-08-16T20:54:46.160

Reputation: 4 307

This seems to be what I'm looking for. I will test it and report back, but the site seems to be down :( – manoftheyear – 2017-08-17T14:51:07.470

1Apparently this doesn't work in Windows 10, since it calls every hotkey when opened. – manoftheyear – 2017-08-17T16:05:57.407

1Not sure what you mean. It works for me in Windows 10 to find all shortcuts with hotkeys set up in them. But of course, not all hotkeys are set using that method. – Yisroel Tech – 2017-08-17T22:59:45.383

It worked after I tried it again and I could finally remove the annoying shortcut. Thank you! – manoftheyear – 2017-08-22T18:35:30.073

As far as I know, the shortcut keys will only work if the shortcut lives on the Desktop or in the Start Menu. So to find all possible culprits, you can open up a command prompt and then run this:

dir /s /b "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\*.lnk"
dir /s /b "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\*.lnk"

This will display all shortcut files on the Desktop and in the Start Menu. Look for one which matches whichever application is opening up. Then open up the shortcut and remove the shortcut key.

Jim

Posted 2017-08-16T20:54:46.160

Reputation: 378

Open the App's properties, go to Shortcut and in the Shortcut Key field, edit it to something else. Visual Studio should start working as it was prior to the install

TomEus

Posted 2017-08-16T20:54:46.160

Reputation: 3 355

As I said in the question, I've already did this but none of the shortcuts I could find (which were just one) had any shortcut key assigned. But thank you for your response :) – manoftheyear – 2017-08-17T14:54:57.693

Basing on the response from Jim's post here are the commands for powershell and win10 that worked for me:

dir $env:APPDATA"\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\*.lnk"
dir $env:USERPROFILE"\Desktop\*.lnk"

Krzysztof Szynter

Posted 2017-08-16T20:54:46.160

Reputation: 683