Hey guys, I'm back. I made $1 post a bit ago about using the Windows Magnifier with a multi-monitor set up, and I'm back with more baby!

OK, so sometimes I want the magnifier to follow the text insertion point, and there is a setting for this. You can find this in the magnifier settings page in the new style Windows 10 settings (by the way, I know they stopped using METRO a while ago, but what is the name for the new UIs and stuff?).

Anyway, to turn it on, or off, you need to *manually* change it.

I'm lazy though, and sometimes I need the magnifier to follow, or not follow, the caret on the fly. Right, if I've 2 windows open, and I'm typing something *but* I need to see the other window. Another example, sometimes programs take control of the caret, typically this isn't an issue, but when you're using the magnifier it will jerk around the screen needlessly.

So, I made an Auto Hotkey script to do this on the fly. Big thanks to u/tynansdtm for enhancing my original script.

Go here and install AHK: https://www.autohotkey.com/

Its a super small and lightweight platform that can allow you to automate almost, darn near, anything. Once its installed, right click your desktop and, go down to new, and create a new AHK script. Once you've made the new script, edit it by going down to the last new line and type in this script:

#`::
RegRead,regval,HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ScreenMagnifier, FollowCaret
If(regval=1)
RegWrite, REG_DWORD, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ScreenMagnifier, FollowCaret, 0x00000000
else
RegWrite, REG_DWORD, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ScreenMagnifier, FollowCaret, 0x00000001
return

OK, let me explain what's going on here. So, to not get to technical, everything in Windows is stored in the registry, that is, you can think of it like a place where all your settings are kept. But the thing is, you *see*, computers are binary, they're all 1s and 0s; on or off. So, when you *manually* select the magnifier's setting to follow, or not follow, the caret a 1 is changed to a 0, or vise versa, somewhere deep in Windows.

Save it, right click it and choose compile, then double click it to run it. Once it execute it'll hide down in your task bar.

Whenever the script is running, just press the Windows key and the tilde key, together, and the magnifier "follow text insertion point" setting will change automatically and without delay.

Can messing around in your registry muck up Windows? Yes, absolutely. But this shouldn't cause anything to go crazy, it just means that *you* shouldn't go around changing 1s to 0s just for fun. There is always a chance something could go wrong, but I seriously doubt it. I've been using it without issue.

I got the idea to do this because my fancy new, totally unnecessary, RGB LED keyboard came in yesterday, and Razor's software has a builtin macro builder, thought I could use it to automate this, but when it didn't work, I finally decided to learn about AHK. You can trust AHK, its an old, trusted, open source project that's been kicking since... I actually don't know. I first heard about it in middle school, but never got around to it until now.

Anyway, I hope it helps anyone that needs it.

Don't tell anyone guys, but I'm starting to like this community.

I like contributing to it. I like being snarky to other fellow blind folks.