Don't want to read through the geeky blah blah? Can't be bothered to install one thing to do another? Grab the single standalone executable right here, right now " then check the highlighted lines at the bottom of the post:

Over the years the web interface of Twitter has grown on me. Amidst the variety of tools use to access the service it remains one of my favorites, if not the favorite.

One thing that's seriously messed up and utterly wrong with it is the built-in retweet functions. I really, really don't like it and much prefer the old way of doing it, now referred to by Twitter as "quoting" a tweet:

RT @ruudhein show me the coffee!

While doing an old-school retweet - "quoting" -  is easy in most Twitter clients, including Twitter's own official app, it remains a purely manually process in the web interface.

  • Highlight the tweet
  • CTRL +C to copy the tweet
  • Click reply
  • type RT
  • Paste the tweet

INTRODUCING AUTHOTKEY

AutoHotkey_logo

Autohotkey, the awesome macro-based automation tool, to the rescue.

I've written an Autohotkey macro/script to do most of the above (don't like scripts? Get the single executable we compiled for you). With it, my RT process looks like this:

  • highlight the tweet
  • press \
  • done

I can add a word or two to the RT or not, of course.

Here's the script. Notice that I've also added the CAPS LOCK as a hotkey for the script.

The script's action only triggers when one of the hotkey's is used while the statusbar of the window that has focus has the word "Twitter" in it.

#IfWinActive, Twitter / Home
Capslock:: ; RT on twitter home
Send ^c ; copy
Send r{Backspace}
Send ^v ; paste
Send ^{Home}RT{space}{Home}
return
#IfWinActive
#IfWinActive, Twitter / Home
\:: ; \ = RT on twitter home
Send ^c ; copy
Send r{Backspace}
Send ^v ; paste
Send ^{Home}RT{space}{Home}
return
#IfWinActive
#IfWinActive, Twitter
Capslock:: ; RT on twitter
Send ^c ; copy
Send r{Backspace}
Send ^v ; paste
Send ^{Home}RT{space}{Home}
return
#IfWinActive
#IfWinActive, Twitter
\:: ; \ = RT on twitter
Send ^c ; copy
Send r{Backspace}
Send ^v ; paste
Send ^{Home}RT{space}{Home}
return
#IfWinActive

On individual tweets the scripts works just like that: highlight, press the hotkey.  When you're in a stream, like your home stream, you first have to  select the tweet by clicking on it. Then highlight, press hotkey.

Download: No Script, Single Executable

Not into macro-geekery? Can't be bothered installing one exe to run some script yadah yadah?

We compiled the above script into a single, standalone executable you can download and run as-is. No installation needed.

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you!