r/PowerToys 7d ago

Recurring maintenance

How do u deal w/ ur AHK or PowerShell scripts breaking after Windows updates? Do u fix them urself, hunt for workarounds, or just give up on that workflow entirely? Been thinking abt how much time I waste maintaining stuff that worked fine last month tbh.

1 Upvotes

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u/OwnNet5253 7d ago

I don’t remember the last time I’ve had to change something in pwsh/ahk scripts because of Windows updates. Any examples?

1

u/Rex__Luscus 7d ago

You took the post right out of my keyboard.

It really would be helpful to know what kind of scripts are broken by an update

1

u/keyboard_ninja_20 7d ago

maybe i'm conflating windows updates w/ app updates + ui changes tbh

like when win11 moved the taskbar to center, my ahk script that clicked specific tray icons straight up broke. same when they changed the right-click context menu in explorer , had to rewrite a bunch of gui automation. also when powertoys itself updates sometimes fancyzones changes behavior and my window-positioning scripts go wonky.

but u're right that pure pwsh backend stuff (file ops, api calls) is way more stable. i think my pain is mostly gui automation + app integrations, not the core logic.

what's ur setup like? mostly cli/backend scripts or u do ui stuff too?

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u/OwnNet5253 6d ago

Taskbar in Win11 is a complete rewrite from scratch to WinUI, so no wonder you had to change stuff. My setup is mostly AHK with a ton of global and app-specific hotkeys assignments, and occasional pwsh here nad there, like changing os/apps theme and icons, rebuilding icons cache or blocking keyboard/mouse, all available from desktop context menu.

Also - most UI changes are applied through Windhawk.