Map Alt Space to Win (Start Menu) in Windows 10

I'm trying to map Alt+Space to open the Start Menu on Windows 10 (to the same hotkey as Spotlight on Mac). I'm trying to use AutoHotkey, but it's not working:

LAlt & Space::LWin

Maybe it has something to do with the effects described by #MenuMaskKey blocking LWin from working, so I've tried adding adding a tilde to preserve behavior. But the following doesn't seem to work either:

LAlt & Space::~LWin

UPDATE - some new examples

; WORKS:
3::LWin
; DOESN'T WORK:
!4::LWin
; WORKS:
!5:: RunWait, cmd /k echo hello

So, from the above, it appears the LWin command does work as a target key, and the Alt key does work as a modifier (!). Maybe it's the combination of Alt and LWin that doesn't work.

I think my theory based on reading the above link is that Alt hotkey's get Ctrl added to them to prevent them from activating things like menus. Since Ctrl+LWin doesn't bring up the start menu normally, I'm guessing this is the problem.

But I haven't figured out if this can be fixed with the MenuMaskKey command.

1 Answer

The problem was that while Alt is pressed down, the LWin key doesn't have any effect in Windows, apart from anything AHK does. The following solved the problem for me:

;Alt interferes with LWin
!Space Up::Send {Alt Up}{LWin}