How to capture special key events?

Question

On my laptop I have several special keys, not found on a standard keyboard, like changing performance profiles. The vendor supplied a software that handles this key. Is there a way to catch this key event from a custom program? As far as I know Windows internally works with messages. How could I listen to all keyboard related messages and log the id of the key so I could know later which key id should handle?

Perhaps one of the answers to [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/2441457/2513200) can provide a starting point? — Hulk, Nov 13 '13 at 10:23

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '13 at 11:09

I think Register Hotkey may be what you are looking for, you can handle normal keyboard interaction as normal and use Register Hotkey to handle the hotkeys.

You may also want to take a look at http://www.autohotkey.com/ which provides a pre-made version of what you are looking for. (may not suit your needs though, so not sure about this)

Another approach would be to use wh_keyboard hook (with an example located here on how to utilise this as a DLL). And an overview of Windows Hooks here.

How to capture special key events?

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