We all have repetitive tasks we wish to automate on our PCs. Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party Windows apps that can shoulder the burden and help you be more efficient with your time.
aText is a great text expansion tool that lets you create shortcuts for frequently used phrases. Over time, it has saved me a few hours every month while minimizing typos. But it does more than just basic text expansion.
You can create a personalized template with dynamic fields like date, time, image, and more.
For example, I use aText to automate my daily author pitch template with the shortcut atpxx. I have other shortcuts for my home and office addresses, emails, and frequently used website URLs.
aText supports rich and plain text, scripts, and more advanced options. The tool is free to download, but you can upgrade to the premium version ($5/year) for an ad-free experience.
AutoHot Key is a popular automation scripting language for Windows. While you can use it as a text expander like aText, it can do much more. You can write a script to assign a hotkey to open a program and perform a task within, enhance the built-in clipboard functionality, create basic GUIs to interact with your work programs, and even reassign a keyboard combo to a single key like Alt+Tab=Win to switch between apps.
Here are some other ways I use AutoHotkey to automate repetitive tasks with keyboard shortcuts:
- Quickly create a new Google Meet link and copy it to the clipboard.
- Automatically correct common typos.
- Move the mouse to the center of an active Window on an ultrawide monitor.
- Create a shortcut to quickly open Google search from any app.
- Launch specific Asana tabs for quick task management.
- Perform a quick Slack search using highlighted text from Word or a web page.
Sure, these are tailored to my specific use case, but you can tweak them based on the apps you use. While AutoHotkey does require writing scripts, it’s relatively easy to learn and offers endless automation possibilities.
AutoDark Mode is a simple yet highly useful automation tool—and honestly, Microsoft should include this feature by default. As the name suggests, it switches between your Windows PC’s dark and light themes at a specified time.
To enable automatic theme switching, go to the Time tab and choose your preferred schedule. You can set a custom time, use a sunrise-sunset schedule based on location, or sync it with Windows Night Light for seamless transitions.
For more control, it lets you set conditions to prevent theme changes while playing a game. If you prefer deeper customization, you can manually tweak the configuration file to make further adjustments.
Microsoft Power Automate can help you automate repetitive daily tasks on Windows. These are known as Flows, and what you can do with it largely depends on your workflow. For instance, I have created flows to automatically send a payment reminder email to my sports club members via Outlook and another to automatically save email attachments to OneDrive and even organize my photos by date.
Beyond the basics, Power Automate can perform more complex tasks specific to your job. You can use it to generate reports, process data using APIs, validate invoices, and more. If you are new to Power Automate, use the Examples tab in the app to explore pre-built templates and learn how things work.
4
Task Scheduler
Task Scheduler is a built-in Windows utility that automates tasks based on predefined conditions. You can use it to automate batch files execution, launch apps, and perform system maintenance tasks like disk cleanup and updates.
I created a setup where Task Scheduler automatically closes OneDrive when my laptop is not plugged in. Other cool everyday use cases involve automatically cleaning temporary files to free up space, auto-launching your favorite apps or a game at a specific time, and scheduling your PC to shut down after you go to bed.
3
PowerShell
Microsoft PowerShell is a command-line-based scripting language designed to automate system tasks, often through the use of other applications. At a basic level, it can be used to change execution policies, manage Microsoft Store apps, add or remove users, and configure network devices.
You can use PowerShell scripts to automate tasks in Windows. For instance, I’ve set up a script scheduled with Task Scheduler to automate daily file organization and another to monitor my server status by pinging it and alerting me if it goes down.
My work is, of course, not that technical, but on an organizational level, PowerShell is used to automate almost everything that needs to be done manually across hundreds of systems with less room for errors.
Microsoft improved Windows 11’s clipboard with the introduction of clipboard history, but it’s still limited. Ditto is an advanced clipboard manager that lets you save an unlimited number of copies and configure it with the Ctrl + # shortcut to paste the last 10 clipboard items directly from the keyboard.
You can edit the clipboard items to fix typos or errors, add new clipboard items, create groups, and even search to find copied items. Make sure to use the Ctrl+ `(backtick) shortcut to launch and open the clipboard.
If scripting isn’t your thing, DropIt is a free and open-source utility that helps organize your messy media library. It can monitor folder changes and automate file management without requiring complex scripts.
With DropIt, you can create extension-based rules and pair them with actions like Move, Copy, Split, Delete, Compress, or Ignore. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop a folder onto DropIt’s floating icon on your desktop, then select the file association, action, and destination folder for each file type.
AutoHotKey, Ditto, and aText are essential parts of my daily workflow automation. For everything else, I rely on PowerShell scripts whenever possible. These tools help me work faster by simplifying repetitive tasks, minimizing unnecessary mouse movements, and keeping my work uninterrupted.
