Hotkey Conflicts
Tex registers its global hotkeys with Windows through NHotkey. A hotkey can only be owned by one process at a time — if another app registered it first, Tex's registration silently fails and the hotkey does nothing.
Symptoms
- Pressing a hotkey does nothing; no capture overlay appears, no tray flash.
- The app log (Debug output) contains a warning like
Failed to register hotkey: RegionCapture = Ctrl+Shift+S. - Other Tex hotkeys work fine — only the conflicting one is dead.
Common conflicts to avoid
| Combination | Owned by |
|---|---|
Win+Shift+S | Windows Snipping Tool (OS-reserved) |
Ctrl+PrtScn | Windows screenshot key |
Ctrl+Shift+T | Most browsers — "Reopen closed tab" |
Ctrl+Shift+S | ShareX, Snagit, Greenshot (if installed) |
Win+G | Xbox Game Bar |
Warning — Tex cannot detect OS-reserved combinations ahead of time. Registration just quietly fails. Always confirm a new hotkey actually fires after changing it.
Diagnosis
- Isolate the binding. In Settings > Hotkeys, temporarily change the suspect hotkey to something unusual —
Ctrl+Alt+F9is a good probe. - Re-trigger. Press the probe. If it fires, the original combo was owned by another app. If it still doesn't fire, the problem is elsewhere (see 12.1).
- Check Debug output. If you are running from Visual Studio, the Debug console logs every registration attempt and any failures via
Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug(see 12.3).
Workaround
Pick a different combo in Settings > Hotkeys. Changes apply immediately — the hotkey service unregisters all current hotkeys and re-registers from settings. No restart required.
Tip — If you rely on Ctrl+Shift+S muscle memory, disable or uninstall the competing tool (ShareX / Snagit / Greenshot) rather than rebinding Tex. Tex re-registers on every settings save, so it will reclaim the combo as soon as the other app releases it.
Related
- See Appendix B for the full hotkey reference.
- See 10 — Settings and Preferences for the hotkey configuration UI.