Where the hotkey settings live
Open Prefs, the wrench icon at the right of the toolbar. It opens a menu, not a settings window.
Both TinyTask hotkeys are set from this one menu. The entries are Recording Hotkey and Playback Hotkey. Each one opens a submenu with the available choices. A tick marks the one currently in use.
This trips people up, because most programs put shortcuts in a preferences dialog with text boxes. There is no dialog here and there are no text boxes. There is a menu, and you pick from what is on it.
The recording hotkey
The recording hotkey both starts and stops recording. It is a toggle. Press it once to begin, press the same key again to end.
Your choices are:
Control + Shift + Alt + R, the defaultPrint ScreenF8F12
There is one behaviour here that no other automation tool of this kind gets right, and it is worth knowing. The recording hotkey is excluded from the recording itself. When you press it to stop, that keystroke is not written into the macro. Without that, every recording would end with a phantom key press that fires again on playback.
That is also why the toolbar button and the hotkey are not quite interchangeable. Using the Rec button means moving your mouse to the toolbar, and that mouse movement does get recorded. Using the hotkey keeps your cursor where it is. For anything where cursor position matters, the hotkey gives a cleaner macro. The full recording workflow is in the how to use TinyTask guide.
The playback hotkey
The playback hotkey starts a macro. It does not stop one.
Your choices are:
Control + Shift + Alt + P, the defaultPrint ScreenF8F12
Look at the bottom of that submenu. The program prints its own note there, telling you which keys end a playback that is already running. Those are Pause and ScrollLock, and Break works as well. They are not hotkeys you assign. They are always active, and they cannot be turned off or reassigned.
Keep the two ideas separate. The playback hotkey is a starter. The stop keys are a brake. Pressing the starter again mid-macro does nothing at all. If a macro is running right now and you need it to stop, the stop playback page is the one to read.
What has no hotkey
This is where most hotkey guides for this program go wrong, because they describe shortcuts that do not exist.
There is no shortcut for saving. There is no shortcut for opening a file. There is no shortcut for compiling to an executable. There is no pause shortcut, because the program cannot pause a recording or a playback. There is no shortcut for speed or for loop count.
None of those are TinyTask hotkeys. They are toolbar buttons or menu entries. Save, Open and .exe sit on the toolbar. Speed and loops sit inside Prefs, and each is covered on its own page: playback speed and loops.
If you have read that Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S stops a macro, it does not. That combination does nothing in this program. Open Prefs and check the submenus yourself. Everything the program can be told to do by keyboard is on those two lists.
Choosing a hotkey that will actually work
The default combination is long on purpose. Four keys together are almost impossible to press by accident, and almost nothing else claims them.
The alternatives each carry a cost.
Print Screen is claimed by Windows itself. Depending on your settings, it opens the screenshot tool or copies the screen. If you pick this one, you give up the ordinary screenshot behaviour while the program is running.
F8 is used by many applications. Debuggers, spreadsheet tools and some browsers all bind it. It is also the key some machines use during boot, though that does not affect you once Windows has started.
F12 opens developer tools in every major browser. If you automate anything inside a browser, this is the worst choice on the list.
There is a practical rule that follows from all three. Pick a hotkey that the application you are automating does not use. The program sends its keystroke to Windows, and so does everything else. Whichever one is listening wins.
On laptops there is one more trap. If your function keys default to media controls, then F8 may be a volume or playback key until you hold Fn. In that case the program never sees the press. Most laptops have a firmware setting to swap this behaviour, usually described as function lock or action keys.
Why you cannot use any key you want
Because a full remapping feature existed once, and it was removed.
The developer built it, then took it out, because it made the program noticeably bigger. This tool's entire reason for existing is that it is tiny. A feature that most users would set once and never touch again was not worth the size it cost. The short fixed list is the compromise that survived.
You can dislike that trade. It is at least an honest one, and it explains a limit that otherwise looks like laziness. It also tells you something useful about the whole program: almost every missing feature here is missing for the same reason.
Where your hotkey choice is stored
Your choice is written to a settings file that sits in the same folder as the program.
This has three consequences worth knowing.
Your settings travel with the program. Copy the folder to a USB stick and your hotkey comes with it.
Two copies in two folders have two separate settings. Changing the hotkey in one does not change it in the other.
Deleting that file resets everything to default. That is also the fastest fix if the settings ever behave oddly. What else lives in that file is covered on the settings file page.
When the hotkey does nothing
Work through these in order.
Check the tick. Open Prefs, hover the submenu, and confirm the option you think you chose is the one marked.
Check what else wants that key. Close the browser or the tool that might be claiming it, then try again. This is the cause in most cases.
Check elevation. If the application you are automating runs as administrator and this program does not, Windows blocks the input between them. Right-click the program and run it as administrator. The Windows 11 page covers this in full, and it is the second most common cause after key conflicts.
Check the settings file is writable. If the program sits somewhere Windows protects, such as Program Files, it may be unable to save your choice. Move it to a normal folder. The settings file page explains where it can and cannot write.
Check that a macro exists. The playback hotkey does nothing when there is nothing recorded or opened, and the Play button is greyed out in that state. That is not a broken hotkey.
If none of that helps, the not working page covers the wider set of failures, including the ones that have no fix.
Frequently asked questions
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R starts and stops recording. Ctrl+Shift+Alt+P starts playback. Pause, ScrollLock and Break stop a playback that is already running, and those cannot be changed.
Open Prefs, then Recording Hotkey or Playback Hotkey, and pick from the submenu. The tick moves to your choice and it takes effect immediately.
No. You pick from the built-in list. Full remapping was written and then removed, because it increased the size of the program more than the feature was judged to be worth.
No. Pause, ScrollLock and Break are always active and cannot be reassigned or disabled. The program notes them under the playback hotkey submenu, and the stop playback page covers what to do when they seem not to work.
No. The recording hotkey is deliberately excluded from the recording, so the key you press to stop does not fire again during playback.
The stop keys do. Pause and ScrollLock end a compiled macro exactly as they end a playback inside the program, and we tested that on a compiled file. Whether the playback hotkey can start one, we have not tested. What compiled files can and cannot do is covered on the compile to EXE page.
Almost always because that program has claimed the key first, or because it runs with higher privileges than this one. Try a different option from the list, and try running as administrator.